Love on Earth
by Nutsaboutremus
Summary: COMPLETED! EPILOGUE UP! REVIEW(Post-Hogwarts,DG,a bit AU)This dark, romantic tale asks whether it is possible to survive a love that consumes you. Full summary inside.
1. Default Chapter

**LOVE ON EARTH**

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**Summary: This dark, romantic tale asks whether it is possible to survive a love that consumes you. The answers that Ginerva Weasley discovers are heartbreaking and wise, as complex as they are devastating. For in our dreams, love is simple and glorious but it is something absolutely different here on earth.**

**DSCLAIMER: NOTHING is mine…**

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_Shards of fantasy _

_Filtering through my conscious._

_His lips on the inside of my wrist_

_My fingers uncurling against his supple palm_

_His hard masculine lines pressed up against me_

_Hot whispers into his stubble tainted skin_

_Most of all, a thought from the heart_

_Of watching his dark hair gray with age._

- Anonymous

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Part One

She fell in love with him three times – the first time was in his last year at Hogwarts and she only realised it in retrospect.

"It was like seeing someone for the first time, and you look at each other for a few seconds, and there's this kind of recognition like you both know something. Next moment the person's gone, and it's too late to do anything about it." She would say when she told Hermione about it years later, when she recollected that moment.

It was in the Grand Hall. Dumbeldore had just stood up to announce that the end of the year had arrived, that all houses should cooperate as one, not to lose hope if deatheater attacks rose and no deatheater would be allowed to set in foot in the sanctuary known as Hogwarts even if he were a student. The last bit raised a lot of murmurs among the students.

"So this means Malfoy's not a deatheater." Harry thought aloud.

"Not yet, anyway." Hermione glanced across the room, darkly.

Ginny did not blame her. That year had been filled with deatheater attacks on muggles, the Slytherins looking increasingly smug and confident each time they were reported.

Ginny too followed her gaze at Draco's, staring at him as she mused over her own thoughts.

Thoughts about how Draco would not meet anyone's eyes and how she could not bear to see anyone fold up inside themselves, the way he did, going farther and farther inside, until the part of him having dinner at the Slytherin table was only the smallest corner of his soul.

He was cutting his food carefully before he looked up, right at her and did not even blink. She went on looking at him. Ginny was possessed with the giddiest feeling.

She wanted to make him laugh, for some strange reason. She would see if she could. It was his last night here, she would possibly never see him again, and he was good looking even if he was thoroughly annoying. She crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him.

"What do you think you're doing?" Ron said to her. Ginny had not imagined her brother catching her.

"Nothing." She quickly told him. 'It's just Luna." Only Hermione noticed Luna's back was facing them but she said nothing about it, her gaze lingering slightly longer on Ginny.

When Ginny looked across the hall, she saw that Draco was gone. And then she realised all at once, she did not ever want to stop staring at him.

The second time was during the heat of the Second War. She was working as one of the healers, at one of the temporary branches of St. Mungo's set up nearer to the battleground.

There seemed to be a shortage of healers, and so she had volunteered her services, right out of Hogwarts. Even Oliver Wood, realising how useless his quidditch skill was in such a situation, volunteered as a healer.

Fighting in a battle was not a way he wished to contribute to their fight against the Dark Side – that was what he told Ginny during one of their patrols around the medical campgrounds, one night.

They had become friends, confidants but had little time or mind for anything else. But Oliver was the one who brought Draco to her, not fully recognising him as he was preoccupied with a C-section he had to perform on a witch downstairs.

Ginny knew who he was instantly. She was not surprised to see him there. Medical aid was to be provided to anyone who sought it. There was to be no discrimination. It was in the well-known Convention of Wizarding Wars.

What intrigued her was which side he was on. According to Harry and her brother, there seemed to be no sign of Draco on the Dark side, neither was he acting as a spy for Dumbledore. Ginny had simply presumed that he had absconded, spoilt for choice of which side to fight for.

Until then though.

He was leaning against the doorframe, dark robes billowing about him, his hood thrown back over his shoulders. He looked like a dark angel. For a moment, Ginny was mesmerised. He was beautiful. There was little doubt about that. The arch of his eyebrow, the smirk on his lips was all telltale signs that he sure as hell knew that he was good looking.

But then her attention was snapped by the trail of blood on the floor behind him.

He had a long gash up his arm. Ginny motioned him to sit on the bed, while she pulled out her medical supplies. It took a few select charms to close up the gash on his arms.

Ginny went about her task, confidently, having done it a million times, belying the whirl her thoughts were in – why did he have a gash on his arm? Who had done that to him? Was he involved in the War?

He said nothing, did not even wince in pain once, simply watching her intently.

Finally unable to stand the silence, Ginny having finished healing the cut, stood up, motioning to his arm, " Didn't it hurt?"

"That's a stupid question." Draco had that mean edge in his voice and Ginny might have turned and left, if she had not realised that he was crying.

She sat down on the bed beside him, watching him and she found out how much it hurt. She realised how young the all were – she only eighteen, he a mere nineteen.

She made him lie down and remained with him, till he fell asleep. She watched him asleep, the look of peace on his face, so unlike the haunted gaze he had fixed upon her when he had first walked in, and she fell for him, for the second time. Felt the twisting of her heart, the fluttering in her chest but did not bother to figure out what it was.

She left him to go one her night rounds and when she returned, he was gone, just like that.

Ron came by late that night, on an Auror's order to check the patient files. They had a bit off a tiff since that was considered a serious breach of patient healer confidentiality. Only after Oliver, being one of the healers-in-charge, intervened did Ron back down.

After switching to big brother mode and making sure Ginny was okay, he went back to Order of The Phoenix head quarters. Ginny wondered about her brother's request – they had to be a reason why he was given such orders. Did it have to do with Draco? Her guess was as good as anyone else's.

The third time, was inevitable.

A few years after The Second War, the Malfoy name was all over the place, back to reining the power and prestige that had always been associated with the name.

Never mind that Voldermort was dead, defeated at last by Harry and excellent Auror strategy, never mind that no one knew where Draco had been all those years. Suddenly he was back. Suddenly he was in control again, monopolizing business markets, making large contribution to every charitable organisation named.

He has squared the debts his father owed. He was one of the richest wizards on this side of the world. Even a ward at St. Mungo's had been named after him.

One thing wealth bought in the wizarding world was respect. Already ministry officials were courting him when they needed a new roof for the library or funds for a stoplight. Despite all this, Draco was still murmured about behind his back.

When people saw him at Diagon Alley, they spoke to him courteously all the while wondering why he did not just go home. He did not even drink, sitting at Cauldron's Inn with a butterbeer, for reasons the regulars were still trying to figure out. When Draco finally left, rarely having said more than a few words, then people were brave enough to refer to him as the devil or the arrogant son of a gun.

It was the women who turned to look when Draco walked by. They pitied him, they really did. He lost not only his mother who was sick every day of her last few years, but also his father who died in the throes of Azkaban. It was lonely for a man to live like that.

These witches could not turn him down. He was hurt and he needed someone. They did not have to mention that going older has only served to make him more good looking than he was back at Hogwarts, when they would not have had a chance. He never bedded any of them for more than a night, he gave nothing of himself away and he left them cold in their beds the next morning. They were all just another good lay for him.

Ginny knew all this. She heard the whispers and the mutters. She was still working at St. Mungo's having been promoted to assistant supervisor of the Magical Maladies ward. She still had lunch regularly with Oliver Wood, now Supervisor for the Maternity ward. They still talked and confided in each other, still avoided discussing the slightest hint of wanting more than a simple friendship.

What was different now was that despite tales of all of Draco's escapades in bed, how cold hearted he was, she felt otherwise. She felt as if she knew the real him, the boy who sat on the bed, and had cried in front of her, the one dark night four years ago.

She felt she knew him completely and not at all. This intrigued her, the potent combination of a mystery that called to her heart. She thought about him frequently.

And then she began to fall, completely, absolutely. It was only a matter of time, she decided. These feelings for him had always been simmering beneath the surface, since Hogwarts.

Hell, they were way more intense that any other feelings she ever had, even that infatuation on Harry seemed so superficial compared to this. They had been there for so long as well. That had to count for something. She did not just want him; she wanted to make it all better for him.

She thought her love could change him, could make life better for him. That if he knew what it was to be loved; he would be a better person. What he lacked was love. At least that was her theory. But she could do nothing about it, nothing more than fill her thoughts about him.

So much so that she no longer thought about him – he was a part of her mind, there in her head. He was a feeling, the tremor that sped through at her when she happened to see him across Hogsmead, out on a rare shopping expedition. He was memories, all those vivid moments of him at Hogwart, then the climax of it all – the night at the St. Mungo's camp.

Her need for him was so all consuming, she wondered if she was going mad. How could you want someone so much without even knowing him or her inside out?

But then, she _did_. She felt sure that she _did_ know him. You did not have to live with someone for fifty over years to really know them. It could happen in a split second, in an eternal moment of vulnerability.

It must have been that crazy knowledge which propelled her from the table she was sitting at, alone in Three Broomsticks, right across the room to where he was sitting, all by himself, staring at the door, an expression of nonchalance on his face.

It was amazing the places love would carry you; it was astounding to discover how far you were willing to go. Ginny realised this, as she wondered where her pride went. This was Malfoy, the man whom her family loved to hate and who treated her family like scum.

Yet here she was standing in front of him, about to open her mouth and speak to him. She wondered if she was the same person who spat at Zabini's face last week when he tried to hit on her, the slimy Slytherin desperate for a pureblood, no better than Draco himself.

She could not see that similarity in the both of them now. All she could see were Draco's cold, clear, grey eyes.

Draco knew who she was. He had studied her from a distant, waiting for her to come to him. He knew that she would come over, knew that much.

She was the same as the other women, yet different. What set her apart was that she refused to be just another lay, just another one nightstand. If Draco were to bed a woman like her, she would just keep coming back, truly believing that love was in the picture.

He knew all this – he could see it in her cinnamon brown eyes, the way she licked her lips nervously, the way she pushed her long hair off her face. For a moment, he considered her, standing there, looking at him.

She was a pretty girl – a pouty mouth that was rosy and sweet, hair as red as the blood Draco saw every night in his dreams, a curvaceous petite body that would keep him warm in bed.

She would make a memorable night, of that he was sure. It did not matter that she was a Weasley, at least she was a pureblood and after The War that was hard to come by.

"Let's get out of here." Draco spoke first, standing up. Ginny was startled. She had not even said anything.

"I don't think-"

"Fine." He cut her off, walking off.

"Wait-"

He stopped, turned around and fixed her with one of his stares. She looks right back at him, and then she knows like he knows – at the core they are both identical.

Seeing the hesitation, panic and anticipation contorting her face, he took a step towards her, crowding her personal space, till she felt breathless from just standing that close to him.

"Wait for what, Ginerva? Wait for what?"

And the strangest thing was Ginny could not think of one thing or one reason she should wait any longer. Her extremely warped mind told her she had nothing to lose and everything to gain.

She tried to remind herself of that, the life she led, the responsibilities she had and yet when he shot her a look of question, she nodded. She even let him grab her by her hand and lead her through the door.

You had to go when you were taken, right? You had to follow when you were led. Don't think. Don't think. Don't stop. Don't hesitate. Maybe this was destiny, the hand of fate against your skin. If there were a warning to be heard, Ginny would not have listened.

Several witches including Rosalyn, Rosmerta's daughter, noticed what was going on. She turned away when she saw them together, fixing up a firewhiskey for herself, drinking it sour.

These were just a few of the women who knew that when Draco could not take you back to your place, he would bring you to the Shrieking Shack, behind the village, to a spot near it, so overgrown you could not see the starlight, and he never kissed you on the mouth.

But any of these women would be foolish to think that being acquainted with a man's habits was the same thing as knowing him. They did not know Draco and never would. They would never guess, for instance, that Draco was bringing Ginny to Madam Puddifoot's.

As she followed Draco outside, she knew she would remember every single thing about that moment for the rest of her life.

How the sky was as gray as soapstone, the scent of cinnamon floating out from the newly opened bakery nearby where they were baking cinnamon bread, children walking by wearing wool mittens and socks.

This, after all, was the instant when she did the exact right thing or the wrong thing depending on what happened next.

Would she wonder if she was thinking straight? Would she guess the chilled wind that was shaking the trees affected her decision or was it the lack of sunlight or the way he looked at her?

It was the sort of the day best spent in bed and watching the back of Draco as he moved, she ached to do just that.

Much to her surprise, she found herself standing outside the familiar small teashop, decorated with frills and bows.

As they stepped inside, Madam Puddifoot herself literally run up to them squeezing in between tables, having never seen the formidable Mr. Malfoy there before.

"A private room." Draco commanded.

Ginny watched him carefully. How tall he seemed, how completely confident Everything about him was so alien and familiar at the same time. The last time she saw him, during the War, he did not have those lines on his face or that darkened colour to his eyes.

The private room was right at the back, a cramped and steamy room with curtains concealing it from view. There was a round table and long stretched couch. Ginny sat down gingerly beside Draco. He ordered two coffees for them before turning his attention to Ginny.

He wanted her, she realised because he believed she knew him inside out. She wanted to believe that too. Also because she could not get over him.

Ginny was nearly twenty-five and she had some white streaks plaited through her hair but Draco did not seem to mind as he leaned across to kiss her. The women at Three Broomsticks could only begin to imagine how deep Draco's kisses were.

Draco kissed her with his eyes open – it shocked her to realise that he was watching her. A man who did not close his eyes, even for a kiss, wanted to keep control at all times. Draco's eyes had cold little flecks in the centre and as Ginny begin to kiss him back, she wondered if she was not making a little pact with the devil.

There was nothing shy or tentative about the way she kissed him. As soon as she kissed him like that, Draco knew how far she would go. He did not have to learn legillimency to divine that. It was the way she leaned her head back, it was the way she closed her eyes.

Ginny thought she was so clever, keeping all her secrets safe but in one single instant she had revealed every one.

He had his hands around her, as she kissed him again and again, as if daring fate, as if she had not a care in the world.

'That's right." Draco whispered to her, " Give me more."

Draco had his hands inside her robes; he pushed her down so that her back was flat against the seat.

Love always had a sour taste for Draco – the more he had of something, the more he wanted. It had always been that way for him. Maybe he could never be satisfied but he knew how to satisfy Ginny and he was doing it right now.

She was there at the edge as he moved his fingers inside her slowly. He did not stop when she told him to and then stopped just when she was about to come.

He kissed her then, greedy and deep, leaving her longing for more – desperate was exactly the way he wanted her.

On any other evening, Ginny would be worried about her parents waiting for her to return with the groceries and to have dinner together as they did every Thursday but she could not think about that.

She was already agreeing to see Draco tomorrow, and the next day and the one after that.

Sometimes love was like a house without any doors.

It was a sky filled so many stars it was impossible to see a single one.

**_TBC_**

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**A/n: Since no one seems to be reviewing, I'll just stop this story even though I have written all four parts that there is to this story…so tell me if you think this story is worth anything at all..Twenty reviews and then I'll not trash this story..dun want to waste my time on some trashy piece of writing..**


	2. Part Two

**LOVE ON EARTH**

**Part 2**

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**Summary: This dark, romantic tale asks whether it is possible to survive a love that consumes you. The answers that Ginerva Weasley discovers are heartbreaking and wise, as complex as they are devastating. For in our dreams, love is simple and glorious but it is something absolutely different here on earth. POST HOGWARTS, SLIGHTLY AU-ish**

**DSCLAIMER: NOTHING is mine…**

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_Flames flickering against the wall _

_Shadows dipping against each other _

_The light is slow in the eyes_

_The warm rush of blood, desire_

_Pooling in the pit of the gut_

_Tantalizing the flesh and the soul_

_All at once and all together_

_Just the two of them_

_Sheand him_

- Anonymous

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"You'll never know what she was up to," Madam Malkins commented to Professor Macongall.

The later, having retired from being a professor at Hogwarts, had dropped by to visit her old friend. The two old ladies were ambling down Diagon Alley, buying herbs from the farmer's market held every half moon.

"From the innocent look of her."

Minerva glanced up and saw that Harriet was referring to Ginny Weasley, who was over at the new bakery kiosk, reaching for one of those cranberry walnut tarts.

Ginny laughed as she paid the vendor. With her red hair loose, wearing casual cotton robes, she looked like a young girl.

"I hear they can't get enough of each other." Harriet whispered.

"I'm sure you heard wrong." Minerva whispered. She could discern a prim tone creeping into her voice.

"I taught that girl and I'll tell you Ginny Weasley is too smart a girl to fool around with the likes of him."

Minerva saw the softening in Harriet's face, as if she could not understand that love had nothing to do with intelligence or common sense.

"I need to get some more things. Why don't I meet you back at Leaky Cauldron?" She quickly told Harriet who nodded and went off.

Minerva should get home and start dinner but she had always had a soft spot for Ginny Weasley, the only girl in the Weasley family, that very foolish woman.

She had heard about Ginny and Draco's torrid affair – it was all over the place.

Only Molly, the seemingly sweet naïve woman refused to consider such a thought and had banned her sons from speaking another word about it. What Ginny did with her life was her business and not for them to comment on. That was the approach Molly had taken towards almost everything in life after going through The War, seeing her loved ones at risk and losing her dear husband to an illness. Minerva felt entirely sorry for her.

Minerva knew more about Malfoy than she cared to. She was the one who thought Albus Dumbledore was mad for taking him into Hogwarts, especially with his family background. Perhaps Minerva's attitude concerning Malfoy was narrow but she still thought she was right. **No**. She was _certain_ that she was right.

"I guess you're not going to worry about calories today." Minerva said as she came up behind Ginny.

Ginny had bought two of the tarts Harriet Malkins had insisted were baked with lard, and a bag of chocolate chip cookies. When she saw that it was her dear old professor beside her, she put down her purchases to embrace her.

"I don't know what's wrong with me." Ginny laughed.

"I had an urge for all this." She looked beautiful in the thin sunlight; her skin was so fresh and she had that sweet dizzy expression that women with secrets often possess.

Miverva could tell what was going on from the look on her face – the dazed expression, half puzzled, half delirious, like a woman who had been struck by lightning and was somehow glad of it.

"I heard you've taken a sabbatical from work." Minerva said, tactfully.

"Oh, I just need a break y'know from everything. Been working as a healer ever since the War. Thought I'd focus a bit on my poems and writing."

Ginny had always liked Macongall but now she wished they had not run into each other. She did not want to talk to anyone. She did not want to think.

Her attention was limited. She could not make sense of anything or maybe she did not want to.

She had lost count of what day it was; she had not even bothered to turn up for weekly dinner at Ron and Hermione's place, lying to her brother that she was sick. She used to be so orderly and was no longer. And yet she was convinced she need not worry.

Minerva felt a surge of affection for Ginny. Poor girl, the excuses one could make for love, the lies she told.

Before they parted, she hugged her, "Well, you can always consider teaching at Hogwart." She joked.

Ginny laughed but when she walked towards one of the new street side cafes and sat down to rest, she was shaking.

She knew that she was a liar. She had to lie about what was really keeping her away from her job and all the things she used to consider important, even to herself.

Only that morning, she lied her head off over waffles and coffee at a muggle Bluebird's lunch counter near Hermione and Ron's home.

She actually kept a straight face when she told Hermione, her closest friend after Luna, what she was trying to do next.

Maybe she would start back on the novel she never got around to completing and no, Malfoy had nothing to do with it. Why, she had always wanted to publish a collection of poems and she could finally do so.

Hermione has sat there the entire time with her mouth puckered as though she had been eating lemons.

For one thing, Ron had told her that all his brothers, including Harry, were mortified about the rumours going around about Ginny and Draco but were bound by the promise they had made to their mother not to do anything about it.

For another, Hermione could not help but notice there were love bites all up and down Ginny's neck, which Ginny herself did not realise till she apparated back to the apartment and caught sight of herself in her dressing table mirror.

Ginny got out a turtleneck sweater to wear but even dressed in all that wool and her robes, she got the chills just thinking about Draco. She was like some foolish teenager; she could not seem to get him out of her mind, no matter how hard she tried.

Sometimes, he flooed her via the fireplace the exact moment she was thinking of him; she would lock the kitchen door for privacy and they talked for hours. Every word he said was interesting to her and was never the first to end the floo call, not even when Luna knocked on the kitchen door and asked what was going on.

Liar that she has become Ginny did not tell Luna who was in the fireplace, just as she did not admit the truth about her destination when she went out at night. She had to stop at the Apothecary, she needed to walk for exercise, and she and Hermione were going for a muggle movie.

Instead, she actually met Draco at the end of the alleyway, near her apartment at Diagon Alley, where he was waiting for her so they could apparate together to a cabin he owned near Windsor.

She was crazy for him, exactly as she has always been. More so, because she was a grown woman who by this time in her life, should understand the value of caution.

A few nights ago, they were on the floo network at two in the morning, whispering about what they would like to do to each other, when Draco suddenly decided he was coming over.

Ginny asked him not to – Luna was asleep in the next room, their dog was stretched out by the door – but he was already gone.

Ginny locked the terrier in the pantry and was waiting for Draco when he arrived. She did not stop him from kissing her as they stood in the front hall, she did not refuse to go her to room, or to lock the door. Her bed squeaked when they moved, the dog whined in the kitchen but Ginny paid no attention.

By the time, Draco left, it was already light, although thankfully, this was one morning Luna slept late.

Ginny's lips were puffy and bruised and her hair was fisted in awkward curls but Luna did not seem to notice when she came into the kitchen for some pumpkin juice. And Ginny thanked the powers that be for her friend's dreaminess.

"Where's _Gentle_?" Luna had asked, and only then did Ginny remember she had left the poor creature in the pantry.

When she let Gentle out, the dog backed away from her as if it were the only one who knew what a conniver Ginny really was.

The cranberry-walnut tarts and cookies she had bought at the farmer's market, for instance, have a devious purpose – Draco was coming over to her place for the weekend since Luna had gone to Paris for a week on a Quibbler assignment. Ginny, although she was not like mother and would not dream of baking anything, still wanted to impress her guest.

She did not know that Draco did not give a damn about tea, supper or let alone eating. Not that he was desperate for Ginny either. Draco never lost control of himself. He personally could never understand how a person could give up so much control. He could not do it. It was simply not in his nature.

The idea of being told what to do or how to feel turned him inside out. That was why he was planning to give her something special today – to ensure that he remained in control in this relationship.

"What is this supposed to be?" Draco asked, when Ginny came to the door.

Gentle was standing guard in the hallway, emitting a low throaty growl.

"It's a West Highland terrier," Ginny said as Draco walked in, "Luna's."

"Are you telling me it's a dog?" Draco asked, hanging his cloak up.

Ginny laughed. "That's what I'm telling you."

"Well, then I'll just have to believe it." He moved towards Ginny and the dog growled.

"What are you looking at?" Draco asked the terrier, who was watching him warily and snarled when spoken to.

"She seems to hate you," Ginny teased.

"I don't mind. Let her." Draco drew Ginny near.

"You're the one whose opinions interest me." He circled her waist and whispered, "I can show you what I mean."

Ginny pouted, "You must have the pecan tarts first. They're heaven, Draco."

She took his hand leading him into the kitchen.

Draco walked to the sink to get himself some cool water. After he drained the glass, he came to stand beside Ginny who was arranging the cookies on the plate.

She had an opal ring on her middle finger of her right hand. He took her hand and examined it. Ginny leaned in close to kiss him, but Draco took a step back.

'What?" Ginny asked.

"Where'd you get this from?" He took her other hand, her left hand.

"I bought it at this antique shop." Ginny said truthfully, trying to pull away.

'How horridly cheap."

Ginny laughed. He did this to her all the time, insinuate her however he could, just to get his way. Then she saw. It was no laughing matter. He was not letting go of her hand.

"Want to know what I think?"

She raised her chin to look at him, even though she was suddenly afraid to find out. He seemed extremely pleased with himself as if he had figured out the answer to a very difficult riddle.

"That ring won't go with this bracelet." He was slipping a delicate diamond bracelet through her hand, where it lay sparkling on her wrist.

"Oh really?" She tried to sound amused, as if men gave her pure diamond studded bracelets everyday of her life but that was not how she was feeling. She felt as if she could not stop looking at him, not even if she tried.

There was no measuring love, other than the all or nothing or the space in between. This was all, she saw that in him. This was more than everything.

Could she live without this, what he was offering her? Could she turn away and settle for anything less? Another man would play this like a game but Draco was not any other man.

"Really." He said.

The white shirt he was wearing looked crisp and well pressed but it turned out the fabric was smooth to the touch, delicate linen that felt like silk. Draco kissed her so deeply that her stomach lurched, if she ever had any willpower, it has given way.

He had his arms around her, so that she had her back was against the sink. She could feel the cold copper against her back. Draco pulled down the zipper of her denim pants that she wore around the apartment.

He was calling her all sorts of sweet names, he was telling her it had always been this way between them and it always would be. No one could ever love her the way he did, not in this lifetime, not in this world.

"Come on," Draco said, when he got her pants and underwear pulled down, as if she planned to stop him. As if she could stop herself. She knew she should tell him to wait.

It was a bright afternoon; anyone could turn up at the door. The maintenance man wanting to repair the bathroom pipe, Heidi collecting for the Victims of The War fund.

But Ginny did not tell him no. How could she? She wanted him more at that moment than she ever wanted anything – air, memory, life or breath.

She wrapped her legs around him, with her back pressed into that cold copper sink.

She wanted him to do whatever pleased him; she wanted him to do it all. She was so hot the copper behind her was growing warm to touch; soon the metal would ping with heat, ready to burn.

The way he thrust himself inside her was incredibly greedy, but she was greedy too. That was the secret Draco knew about her – she was no different than he was.

"You want it, don't you?" was what she thought he was whispering to her maybe she was only admitting that fact to herself.

He was making love to her in a way he never did before; he was hungrier and more impassioned.

Ginny moved her hand beneath the fabric of his shirt. It was still he, that same man. There was his heart, right in her hand. She did not care about what anyone thought. Let them say what they wished; let them gossip.

She placed both hands on the sink, palms down to support her weight while he made love to her, as if the world were about to end, as if he could not get enough.

The metal sink was pressing against her, cutting into her skin so that later she would have little indentation in her flesh, and blisters, as though she has been burned.

He had his face against her neck, and she could feel all the heat inside him. She heard him say her name in a strange garbled way, and then she was gone.

She shattered into pure energy, been absorbed into whatever he was, that heat. There was no way to measure this, no scale would do.

Ginny realised that she was crying – the heat that owned her rose to form a single sob as she arched her head back and wrapped around him, tighter still.

-------------------------------**TBC**

**A/n note: **

No. 1 it's not called fishing for compliments, its called blackmailing for feedback… lol

No.2 Ginny's not desperate..obviously you have not been in love..ever hear the phrase – love is stronger than pride

No.3 A BIG kiss and a hug to all those darlings and dears who reviewed this story…

No.4 Each chapter is preceded by a poem… these poems I found by chance..so tell me what you think about them

No.6 Next chapter will be longer..promise, promise…in a bit of a rush so wanted to put this chappie up so you can get a feel of where they're going.

No.5 Feel free to review and let me know what you think of this delightful story……..thank you and have a pleasant day.


	3. Part Three

**LOVE ON EARTH**

**PART THREE**

* * *

**Summary: This dark, romantic tale asks whether it is possible to survive a love that consumes you. The answers that Ginerva Weasley discovers are heartbreaking and wise, as complex as they are devastating. For in our dreams, love is simple and glorious but it is something absolutely different here on earth. (Based on Alice Hoffman's novel Here on Earth)**

**DSCLAIMER: NOTHING is mine…**

* * *

_A surge of heat in the chest_

_A line of terror in the heart_

_A bubbling up of deliriousness_

_A fever raging through the body._

_Desires tangled with reality_

_Clashing, mutating_

_Producing friction that burns the spirit_

_From the core to the peak_

_On fire for you._

- Anonymous

* * *

"You'd better not keep your date waiting." Luna informed Ginny.

Luna lay curled up on the couch while Ginny scurried around the apartment, Gentle drooling at her feet, looking for the shawl to go with her outfit.

It was the sort of chilly, spooky night when it was possible to see one's own breath in the air – perfect for Halloween.

"My date?" Ginny asked, pausing in the process of tugging her heels on, rattled by the notion that Luna knew more than she gave her credit for.

Luna gave her a pointed look. She really had had enough. She was not one to carry resentment around like she was doing now, as if it was a heavy load. But it was a whole other thing to lie to your own best friend and sneak around behind her back.

"Are you talking about Hermione and Ron?" Ginny asked.

She was not ready to discuss Draco with Luna – it was not the time and might never be.

_I can't turn him down, I can't say no to him, I want him all the time. _

Was that what she was supposed to say to the girl who respected her and loved her as best friends do. Did she want to see the look of disappointment on Luna's face?

"That's who you're meeting tonight?" Luna asked, her voice even more hoarse than usual. "Hermione?"

Ginny took too long to answer. Luna snorted and looked out through the window, into the open night.

"Just like I thought," Luna fumed. "The truth really is an alien language to you."

Ginny was taken aback by the anger Luna was displaying – Luna was known for her stoic calmness and composure.

"Okay," Ginny said, moving to sit on the couch beside her, "You want the truth, Lu? I'm meeting Draco."

"Like I didn't know." Luna muttered under her breath, her face turned away from Ginny's, facing the window.

"We're in love, Lu." Ginny begun, " Surely you can understand that."

Luna felt something weird in her throat. She could not stand for this to happen to her best friend, who was the nicest and sweetest girl she had ever known. For some reason, when she thought of Ginny with Draco, she instinctively wanted to cry.

"We're going out for dinner at Dimitri's. It's not exactly a crime." And yet Ginny must feel it is, since she was so busy defending herself.

"Fine," Luna murmured, resignedly. '_It's none of my business'_ she wanted to add but could not bring herself to be that harsh to her blinded friend.

Luna knew Ginny lied about where she went. _Sure, at this time of the night Gin's going food shopping _Luna often thought to herself. _Like I believe it. Like I believe anything she says._

One time she saw them when she took Gentle for a walk. They were in the alleyway nearby.

Luna had looked away as quickly as she could but she had seen Ginny kissing him. She had seen Ginny's head tilt back and her mouth open.

After that, Luna had walked back quietly to the apartment, but it was too late; she had already witnessed too much. As she sat on the front stoop, she began to cry for reasons she could not even begin to understand.

That was the exact way Molly Weasley felt when she realised that it was not just plain gossip.

Molly, far from naïve, knew exactly what was happening all this while. But she had chose to pretend it was mere gossip but now she could not.

It was common knowledge now – everyone had seen Ginny and Draco together on Halloween night.

They had been sitting beside each other all through their dinner at Dimitri's, not across from one another like normal, civilised people. The waitress over there, Regina, did not like to tell tales but honestly, they could not keep their hands to themselves.

They were practically doing it right there at the table, and several customers noticed when he reached his hand under her sweater. Why they had bothered to go out to dinner at all was a mystery to Regina, since it was clear all they wanted was each other.

Tonks was the one who finally informed Mrs. Wealsey of her daughter's affair. She told her when she stopped by to drop off some of Arthur's things that were still left behind in his office, as she sat in the kitchen watching Molly fix them both hot fudge sundaes.

Still, Molly had little choice but to accept it and not question it. She did not want to lose her only daughter. Forbidding her from associating with Malfoy would only drive her further away towards him. After all that Molly had gone through – the war, her husband passing away – she wanted nothing more than to have her children's love.

So she did not breach the topic of Ginny's love life, forbade her sons from doing the same and continued to love her and hope that she would come to her senses.

Common knowledge that it was, Ron found out – through water cooler gossip- and he told Hermione who looked terribly spent after putting the baby down to sleep.

"I just knew it…I thought it'd just be a fling..or even better, some random gossip.."Hermione sighed.

"You know what I'm going to do?" Hermione said, half in jest. "I'll floo them both and get the real story."

Ron pulled her closer to him,

"Stay out of it, I've given Mum my word, " Ron said, " Besides, that man is trouble."

"You sound like you know something."

"I've heard rumours, that's all." Already Ron was backing off, the way he did when he was afraid this intelligent wife of his would figure it all out.

"As Mum says, its Ginny's business, not ours. She's a grown woman." Ron drew in a shaky breath at this point. It was always hard for him to let go of the things closest to his heart.

"After all,"- he really had a great smile, Hermione realised -" love is strange."

She stayed cuddled up in Ron's arms but her mind was miles away. She had always wondered where Malfoy was during the War, but nobody else had ever seemed interested.

Hermione found herself thinking about Malfoy all that night, and into the next day. She got him so much on the brain, in spite of how she disliked him, she ignored her daily chores to focus on him instead.

He was like some terrible puzzle, made up of equal parts flattery and contempt, and she was still trying to figure what bothered her most about him – the way he manipulated the Ministry officials, with his wisely placed donations that have allowed him to buy up and redistrict most of Daigon Alley or they way he manoeuvred Ginny into his life

'Heard any good gossip lately?" Hermione asked Luna as she stepped out of the fireplace, dusting soot of her cloak.

It was Wednesday, the night when Luna roasted her famous rosemary chicken and all the females from the extended Weasley family gathered for ladies' night.

Tonight, though it was only Luna, herself and Gentle. Everyone else was busy with husbands, business engagements or in Ginny's case – a lover.

Luna had begun to fix plates of chicken and rice.

"What are you after?" She asked drolly. " A good murder? Financial ruin?"

"Love," Hermione said, "Or maybe more like insanity. I've been hearing all sorts of things about Ginny."

Luna spooned out the snap beans.

"Did everyone know about this before I did?" Luna looked momentarily puzzled.

"Maybe you didn't want to know."

This statement from Hermione brought Luna up short. She was right, of course.

"Well, tell Ginny she's making a mistake. He's not worth it." Luna said.

Hermione remembered then why they had become rather good friends, what had bonded them – they both cared deeply for Ginny's well being.

"You seem extremely sure that she's making a mistake," Hermione said, surprised by the lack of Luna's typical open-mindedness and strong belief in the inherent good of people.

They brought the plates over to the table.

"I am."

Again, Hermione was surprised, this time by Luna's certainity.

"For one thing, he killed for Voldermort."

"What?" Hermione said. She tilted her head to search Luna's expression so quickly; she could feel the vertebrate in her neck pop.

"Do you remember the rumours that were going around after the War about how soldiers in the camp were found dead in the morning with their throats slit?"

"Yes, it even came out a couple of times in The Daily Prophet but those were just rumours, Luna."

"Pish pash. Ask Ron or even Harry. They did not want anyone to know because it would be utterly demoralising to find out that countless soldiers were being killed in their sleep by some silent killer-"

"Then they would have told the public about it by now."

"The War's over. Bygones are bygones. Some things are best left unexplained and buried. At least that's what they think."

"And you think Malfoy helped in these killings?" Hermione asked, her tone tainted with cynicism.

"Who else had vanished conveniently during The War only to return after it ended with loads of money?" Luna questioned, every bit the Quibbler investigative

reporter.

Hermione considered this, "But he does not have the deatheater mark." She pointed out.

Luna shrugged then.

"Your story has too many loopholes in it, Luna."

"That's what Ron and Harry are for.." Luna suggested, a gleam in her eyes.

All through the meal, the story nagged at Hermione, and when she left, she did not go straight home but using the special portkey Harry had given her she headed to Fox Hill instead.

If Susan, Harry's wife, was surprised to see her at this time of the day she did not say, instead inviting her in with a generous smile and warm embrace.

As Hermione took her seat in the living room, she continued to have a sinking feeling.

She should probably go home and mind her own business. Only a fool listened to unfounded denunciations. After all, she would rarely take one person's version of an incident if she were doing an assignment for the now defunct Order.

But too many things seem to fit together - hushed discussions in Grimmauld Place kitchen between Ron, Harry, Dumbledore and several other Aurors, discussion she was not allowed to join in, increasing number of Auror and soldiers spending the nights at Grimmauld Place rather than the camps near the battlefield.

Hermione was so deep in thought she did not hear Harry walk into the room until he stopped in front of her.

"Merlin, you scared me." Hermione laughed, standing up to hug her best friend.

Harry shook his head, amused. He had hurriedly pulled on his robes over his pyjamas when he had heard that Hermione had dropped by.

"How are you? How's Ron? Little Luca?" Harry asked, sitting down beside her.

"Fine, fine." Hermione smiled but her mind was elsewhere.

She was a niggler, all right. She could not let go, especially when she got the sense she was onto something.

"Have you heard about Ginny-"

Harry nodded, wearily, " And Malfoy." He continued.

"I wonder when I stopped being her friend." Harry looked distinctly troubled.

Hell, he had even asked Ginny personally to be one of the bridesmaids at his wedding, a request she accepted with great honour and pride.

"If it makes you feel better, she has not told me about Malfoy either."

"It does not make me feel better. But thanks for trying." Harry sighed, rising to fix a drink for himself.

Hermione refused his offer of gillywater – her favourite drink.

"Actually that's what I wanted to talk to you about?"

Harry looked up, eyebrow quirked questioningly.

"Malfoy. What do you know about him?" Hermione never believed in beating around the bush.

Harry paused, to ponder her questions, sipping his wine slowly. Just then Susan walked in. She inquired if everything was all right, informed Harry that she would be in the study and left, knowing better than to remain present. She trusted her husband and knew he would tell her about it later anyway.

"Nothing people haven't gossiped about."

He wanted to tell her something. Hermione knew from the twist in his voice. If she asked the right questions, that is. That was why she came to Harry instead of grilling Ron whose charm she would have succumbed to and who with one kiss could derail her entire trail of thoughts.

"Where was he during the War?"

Harry sat down across from her, in the cushioned armchair.

"I didn't say anything about The War."

"That's true. You didn't." Harry knew something all right.

"It's probably nothing," Hermione continued, "I heard some talk about his involvement with the dark side during The War." She admitted.

"What'd you hear? That he killed for Voldermort?"

_Merlin,_ Hermione thought. _They all knew. Luna with her crazy theories was right_.

For a moment, she looked across at her friend – the angle of his cheekbones, his thin long nose, the unusually tight line of his jaw, those green eyes which looked back at her through black rimmed glasses, the haunted, exhausted look deep-set in them. The War had taken a toll on all of them, most of all Harry who had to live with the burden of ending it.

"That's right." Hermione said in an easy tone, not wanting to reopen old wounds. "I heard he might have."

"That's not gossip," Harry said. "That's a fact of life."

Hermione's heart was racing. To calm herself she shifted her gaze to stare at the woodpile by the fireplace, along with Harry.

"Is there any proof?"

Harry looked spent, yet the determined glint in his eye indicated that he wanted it all out in the open. If anything, he had that right, after all he had done.

Knowing this, Hermione pressed on. "Anything at all?"

"The proof is that I know and every one of the aurors and soldiers involved in the battle or who stayed at the battlefield camps knew. We knew Voldermort had a special assassin, one who had the stealth and the means to kill so elusively, at first no one even considered murder as a reason behind the numerous soldiers found dead in their sleep in the morning."

Hermione looked at him, surprised and riveted at the same time.

"And how did you know it was Malfoy?" She asked, though she did not have to.

Harry was not even half done. It was time for certain secrets to be unfurled, certain burdens relieved.

"After a while, it became obvious that this was the work of the dark side. It was a crushing blow to start battle every morning knowing that several of your comrades had been killed in their sleep and only Voldermort could be devious enough to know that – mental warfare I suppose."

"We began to contemplate murder, when one of the healers, I think it was Wood – he did the autopsy reports – discovered there was a slight abrasion to the sides of their necks caused by a healing charm done on a scar there. After working on several of the murdered soldiers, he told us that we could safely assume that their throats had been slit while asleep."

He paused to take a sip of his wine.

Hermione could not imagine what other secrets had been withheld from her. "How did the killer get into the camps?"

"At first we thought there were a few of them, working together as a group. Despite our increased shield and protection barriers around the camps, men were still getting killed. That was when Kingsley came up with a plan, where he would bait himself as one of the night guards and some of us position around with invisibility cloaks and metamorphosis."

"That night we saw this lone figure clad in a dark body suit break each shield and each charm we set up, slip through all of them and enter the camp. The killer had a hood covering his head and a muggle type ski mask so we could not tell who he was at first. As he attempted to kill Kingsley with a knife he pulled out of the sole of his shoe, we sprung into action and attempted to catch him."

"He was too swift for us. He had a portkey. I grabbed him before the portkey activated," Harry's eyes darkened considerably, "The disillusionment charm he was using together with the mask, must have been fading because I'll never forget the grey eyes I saw staring back at me through the two holes of the ski mask. I managed to slash his arm but he was gone before he could even feel the pain."

For some reason the room felt considerably cold, as the both of them sat there unmoving.

"It would have been a blessing if I had killed him then." Harry looked resigned and so much older than his age.

"It's the wine." He said, to explain why his eyes were watering and of course, Hermione nodded, even though alcohol rarely made anyone cry.

"But there's still no evidence that it's him." Harry concluded, rising from his seat.

"There has to be a way to prove that it's him."

"The fact that he lacks the deatheater mark just makes his case all the more credible." Harry pointed out.

Just before she left, Harry touched her shoulder as she pulled her cloak on in the hallway, "Don't begrudge Ron for not telling you. It was one of those secrets of War that we were to carry to our graves." She nodded in understanding.

"Take care of yourself, Harry." She murmured, straining up to kiss him on his cheek before flashing him a smile and leaving.

"So what do we do now?" Hermione asked Ron, later that night; back at home, after bringing him up to date about what she knew.

Ron smiled. He used to hate it when cases did not get solved but now, as an Auror, after The War, he figured that some situations were simply beyond human control.

"Men were killed during War but that's what War's about - casualties. In a war, there is loss of life on both sides, and both sides kill too. Yes, this killer used the cover of nightfall to kill, used stealth, but that's just breaking every convention of the Just War theory. But we don't know who he really is."

"I don't accept that." Hermione said, which may be the moment Ron finished falling head over heels for her.

"You don't have the makings of a criminal case, 'Mione. It's a moral issue."

Hermione did not ask Ron's opinion about whether or not she should pass this information on to Ginny, who it was quite clear, did not want to hear anything negative.

But as a friend, she would want her to know. Whether she listened or not, was beside the point.

Sometimes Hermione felt as if she did not know the first thing about love. Look at the trouble it brought. Look at the mess it made.

Who knew what caused Ginny to love Malfoy - bad judgement or compassion or desire, maybe even loneliness. Who could tell why Ginny would throw everything away for a worthless man.

Hermione wondered about this, as she took off her clothes and got into bed with Ron. She circled her arm around him and kissed him. Did she love him or not? How would she ever know?

She loved the way he was in bed, she trusted his opinions, appreciated his love and care for their child, yearned to see him at odd hours of the day. So what did that all add up to?

Suddenly, Hermione needed to know if she was the only one so completely in the dark about such matters. Ron was honest; he would tell the truth.

His back was to her and the hour was late but she asked him anyway.

_Have you ever been in love?_ He laughed when he turned to her and he whispered in her ear, _Not before you._

Hermione dropped by the following night. Even with a baby, Hermione wondered if she was too free for her own good, now with no job whatsoever. Then again, this was concerning Ginny, the girl she grew up with, her 'sister'. Maybe that was why she just could not mind her own business.

As usual Luna was at home while Ginny was out.

Luna did not look surprised when she stepped out of the fireplace, just mildly perturbed.

"Where's Ginny? I need to speak to her." Hermione shed her cloak.

"She probably won't be back for a while," Luna said drolly, " She's out with you."

"Ouch," Hermione said, following Luna into the kitchen. "I hope I had a good time. Where was I, anyway?"

"She said you and she were going to a restaurant down in muggle London. French and Cuban. You read about it in the muggle newspaper." Luna passed her a bottle of butterbeer.

"Ginny's getting to be really good liar." Hermione mused.

Luna shook her head, puzzled. "She knows that I know so why does she keep lying to me?"

"She doesn't want you to think that she's seeing him so frequently, that she's given him so much importance in her life. She does not want you to know that." Hermione explained.

Luna knew she was right. She had always known that Hermione was the more astute one – Luna just let her emotions get the better of herelf most times.

After talking a bit more, Luna went to her room at ten thirty, to bed she said but really to pen a letter to Terry Boot who was becoming more than just her partner at the weekly cooking lessons she went for.

She left Hermione waiting in the kitchen, and she could not help but feel the tinge of satisfaction when she thought how surprised Ginny would be to find good old Hermione parked in their flat.

It was nearly midnight by the time Ginny did get home.

There was a full moon out and frost on all the fields.

Ginny let herself in the door quietly, but the damned dog barked to greet her.

"Be quiet." Ginny told Gentle.

Ginny's face was flushed from the cold. They had stopped going up to that awful cabin and have begun to that funny little room down the hallway from the dining room room in the Malfoy Manor.

It was a dingy, chilly place but that did not stop them anymore than the knowledge that the house elves were just down below in the kitchen.

It had come to this – they did not give a damn about anyone but themselves. It was true, so Ginny would just have to admit it. It was always that way when they were together. Why, at this point Ginny was not even certain she existed without Draco.

When she left their bed, in an attempt to get home and pretend to Luna that her life was still normal, that was the time she felt as if she had entered into a dream. Everything seemed grey and she was unsteady on her own, as if a strong wind could tip her over. If she stopped to think what she was doing, she would not believe it.

Less than an hour ago, Ginny was down on her knees in that small room, not caring about anything but pleasing Draco. The floor was old pine and rotting, and now Ginny felt tiny splinters in her palms and her knees. Draco was a different kind of lover than any other man she had even been with.

He was sure of himself and he wanted to be completely in control and Ginny did not fight that. In a way, it was a relief. Ginny did not have to think when she was with him, or make a decision, or state a preference. She could tell, from the way he touched her, that he had been with a lot of women, too many, but she was the one he really wanted, and that alone made her forget all reason.

"Stop it," Ginny whispered to the dog when it jumped up to greet her.

"Sneaking in?"

Hermione Weasley had been standing in the hallway, watching Ginny gingerly remove her boots.

"Dear Merlin," Ginny said, clutching at her chest. She was wearing jeans and a pale blue sweater her mother had made as a birthday gift years ago. "You almost gave me a heart attack."

"Here's the thing I'm upset about. Why is it that everyone in wizarding England knew before I did?"

"Knew what? That I was having a heart attack?" Ginny took her cloak off and hung it in the closet. By now, every word she said felt like a lie.

"That's not what you're having." Hermione said.

So, Ginny saw that Hermione still had that annoying habit of judging others.

"What I'm doing is my business."

"Don't you realise everyone is talking about you? Your love life is the main topic of conversation in Diagon Alley and Hogsmead."

"And have you been defending me?" Ginny said, with a bitter edge.

"I defended you to Luna. Sort of."

"Oh, shit." Ginny's cheeks were flushed bright pink. "I told her I was out with you."

"Do you think she's an idiot?"

"Do you think I am?" Ginny asked.

"Actually, yes."

They both grinned at that notion.

"I think you're insane." Hermione hastened to add.

Ginny's grin widened, the big smile of someone who no longer cared about sanity.

"I'm serious." Hermione said.

"Overly so." Ginny agreed.

She insisted on making some tea; once they were in the kitchen, she filled the kettle, set it one the stove and grabbed a bag of chocolate chip cookies and brings them to the table.

"You don't know the things people say about Malfoy, Ginny."

"Please," Ginny bit off half a cookie. "They've always disliked him."

"I'm not talking about silly remarks about his arrogance or indifference."

Hermione could kick herself for not shutting up since it was all very unsubstantial. But this is was her oldest friend. In good conscience, she could not keep quiet.

"Harry thinks he may have had something to do with the killings at the battlefield camps during The War."

Ginny looked at her, wide eyed. "You've got to be joking."

"Well, I'm not. He told me so, yesterday."

"That's ridiculous. Does he have any proof? Did The Order suspect it was him?"

"Harry saw the eyes of the killer before he escaped – they were grey."

Ginny shook her head, stubbornly. "Do you know how many people have grey eyes? Besides, I think people hate Draco – Harry included- just because he won't put up with their crap. Can you understand why he's so suspicious of everyone?"

Hermione bit into her cookie. Harry did not usually make false accusations, and Hermione felt something grating at her.

"I'm worried," She said.

"You're always worried."

"I still wish you would have told me." Hermione gave her pointed look.

"Well, I would've." Ginny grinned. "But I thought you'd disapprove."

"Who me?"

"Yes, you."

They both laughed. No one after all, could disapprove more than she and Luna and also have the guts to tell her so in her face.

"Stop worrying about me," Ginny said. "You don't have to, you, Harry, Ron – none of you need to worry about me."

A friend was someone you told the truth to, but Hermione stopped herself from doing that because the truth was, she was not going to quit worrying, least of all Harry and the rest of Ginny's family.

"I wish I could be happy for you." Hermione said later, after they finished the tea and the entire bag of cookies.

"Try to be." Ginny said, as she walked Hermione to the fireplace.

Ginny threw her arms around her old friend, and they stand there for a while.

Hermione wanted to bit her tongue and say no more but she cannot. "Take some time to think." Hermione told her before departing.

Ginny wanted to laugh then. You do not think about such things; you fall into them, head over heels, without a safety net, without a rope.

------------TBC

A/n note

No.1 Why is she crying? – it's called having an orgasm..and as for the blisters on her skin – trying having the flesh of your ass pressed against a copper sink while someone makes love to you….um..yes, I thought it was quite obvious..but nvm

No.2 The reason why I sound like Alice Hoffman, the author is because this story is largely based on her best selling novel – Here on Earth..I remember stating it in the summary of the first part..so I'll mention it again in this chapter in case I have not..

No.3. No one's mentioned anything about the poems before each chappie…comments required..

No.4 It's all speculation that Malfoy's involved in these killings..no hard evidence..stay tuned to see what other secrets are unfolded..

No.3 MORE REVIEWS..MORE REVIEWS..and go read Harder to Breathe as well..I want another fifteen..hehe


	4. Part Four

**LOVE ON EARTH**

**PART FOUR**

* * *

**Summary: This dark, romantic tale asks whether it is possible to survive a love that consumes you. The answers that Ginerva Weasley discovers are heartbreaking and wise, as complex as they are devastating. For in our dreams, love is simple and glorious but it is something absolutely different here on earth… (a BIT AU)**

**DSCLAIMER: NOTHING is mine…**

_

* * *

_

_He was the closest to hell_

_That she had ever been._

_Fire licking her ankles_

_Each time he kissed her._

_Her insides rotting with desire_

_At his mere sight._

_His name rolling off her tongue - _

_Satan's whip on her back._

_Cursed to the bowels of darkness_

_By her love for him_

_He, her one-way ticket to Dante's Hell._

- Anonymous

**

* * *

**

Molly Weasley arrived today, at Ginny's flat, in spite of a storm that was rattling up and down London. Despite her kind heartedness and her naïve belief in doing the right thing, Molly never backed down when she believed in something. She was as tenacious as hell when she had to be.

This clarity, this single mindedness of purpose was why she had decided to visit her daughter. If luck were on her side, she would be out of here in less than forty-eight hours, along with Ginny.

Love, it now seemed was not what she thought it would be. It was thicker and heavier and much more complicated than she would have ever imagined. She knew that her daughter was with Malfoy, a man she happened to despise and hold responsible for a lot of dark deeds – yet here she was, standing in front of the door of Ginny's home, about to knock on the door.

Luna answered the door. She had been in the study, working on her article, getting ready for the trip she had to make to Nepal for her next assignment. As soon as she saw Molly, she threw her arms around her.

"Mrs. Weasley!" She cried.

Ever since her fourth year, Molly had been a rather maternal figure in her life, mothering and fussing over her almost like she did over Harry. Except she confided a lot more in her, Hermione and Ginny – the four of them being the only females present during those dreary summer holidays at The Burrow or The Grimmauld Place.

Luna pulled Molly into the hallway, where a little white terrier jumped on her legs.

"Who is this?" Molly asked, not having visited her daughter's home the past two years.

She put down her overnight bag. She then leaned down to pet the dog, her back creaking painfully.

"It's Gentle." Luna could not believe how glad she was to see Ginny's mother.

Ever since the death of her own mother, she had found a soothing comfort in Molly's presence whenever she dropped by on the way to the market to make sure her nearest neighbours did not need anything and that Luna was being fed as her journalist father tended to be rather absentminded and Molly knew this all too well.

Molly seemed so real, now. So her. Unlike Ginny who had morphed into a completely different person.

Just that day, while Luna had been hurrying through Hogsmead village on her way to meet her friend Hannah, she had passed by some woman with her collar turned up and a dreamy look on her face. It was not until Luna had ordered butter beer and crisps at Three Broomsticks that she realised the woman she had walked by was Ginny.

"Hello, Gentle." Molly said.

"What's wrong?" She asked, looking up and seeing the look on Luna's face. How could Luna tell her?

"I'm fine." She told her, "I'm just so glad to see you, Mrs. Weasley."

She hung up her cloak in the closet.

"Well?" She said, when she turned back to Luna.

"Well, what?" Luna asked.

"Ginny. I'd like to talk to her."

I don't believe you would, Luna thought

To Molly, however, she suggested that Ginny's schedule was erratic.

"Then let's fix some coffee so it's ready when she gets here." Molly suggested.

The rain outside had become sleet, which hit against the window as though stones were being tossed from above. Coffee on a night like this was not a bad idea.

"Coffeepot?" She asked.

"Filters?"

Luna sat on a stool, her legs pulled up. She had spent the afternoon with Terry, bringing his horse on a walk in the meadows near the ruined farm he had bought over and was slowly restoring.

"Would you ever lie to me?" Luna had asked him, all of a sudden.

"What are the circumstances? Is that I know we've got twelve hours to live, and I have to decide whether to ruin that time with fear, or let you enjoy the little time you have left?"

At Luna's nod, "I'd tell you." Terry said simply, grabbing the lead, continuing their slow walk back to the stables. He did not even have to consider; that was what impressed Luna the most.

"What about you?" Terry had asked. "Would you tell the truth?"

The horse, Carat, had stumbled then and Terry had to lift Carat's rear left leg to see to the problem. There was a tiny, sharp rock wedged into the frog of the horse's hoof, which he removed with a penknife. Luna never did get to answer. Just as well, since she had not known what to say at that time.

But now, in this kitchen, watching the elderly woman she had always privately considered a mother, search the cabinets above the counter for coffee filters, it had all become clear. It was not the lie that was the problem – it was the distance the lie forged between you.

"Mrs. Weasley, don't bother with the coffee." This is what Luna had to say, even when she saw the look on Molly's face.

"She won't be back until late. She never is." Luna swallowed, but it did not help. Words such as these always hurt when you say them.

"She's with him every night. She may not come home at all." Molly blinked, as if by doing so she could bring into focus a vision other than the one Luna was offering.

"I'm sorry," Luna said.

She felt as though everything was her fault. She was only Ginny's best friend, her flatmate, why did she have to feel so damned responsible?

When Molly left the room, to conjure a fire in the fireplace, Luna decided to finish the coffee she started, and she brought her a cup, with a little milk, and a little more sugar, the way she liked it.

Molly gratefully accepted the coffee, and for one delightful instant she had the sense of being fortunate. Every mother worried about the company their daughter kept. Luna was a good friend, she saw that. She was a good person. Luna pulled up a stool for herself beside the easy chair where Molly was settled.

Gentle sat by the window and barked and Molly found herself wondering if Luna was wrong about Ginny, if perhaps that was her at the door now. The visitor however was only a squirrel, sitting on the porch in order to escape the bad weather.

Gentle, having forsaken the door came to join them, stretching out on the braided rug.

Molly leaned her head back again the soft fabric of the easy chair. She thought this type of fabric was called chintz but she did not know for sure. She had only begun to realise how tired she was, in spite of the coffee. She had a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach, which made her think she should go back to The Burrow, via the floo network, but she did not.

Instead she fell asleep right there, in the chair.

Luna covered her with a blanket she had bought on a trip to Ireland on one of her quibbler assignments.

It pained her to see Ginny's mother sleeping in a chair but what could she do? Shake her to consciousness? Tell her to go home? Don't hurt yourself, is what you say to a child, not to a parent, and a woman like Molly was not prone to take other people's advice, not once she had made up her mind.

There was a draft in the living room, and Gentle curled up beside Molly's feet. On the mantle, the clock Ginny's father had made for her kept time. The sleet continued until the roads were slick with ice and fallen leaves.

It was so bad that by the time the first pale light of morning begun to break through the clouds, Ginny had to walk gingerly along the back road, back to her flat.

She was staying with Draco later and later; this time, as she was leaving, he pulled her back to him. Everyone thought he was so evil but he was concerned about Ginny apparating in such bad weather.

People thought they knew him but they did not. The did not know that he cried in his sleep or that he needed to be comforted from the worst of his dreams, over and over again.

When Ginny finally did get home, she had to carefully make her way up the frozen path and hold onto the railing so as not to slip and break her neck on her way to the front door.

She had not taken a cloak. She was so hot these days; she was burning up. All she was wearing were jeans and a borrowed wool sweater of Draco's. She had not even bothered with underwear either; she was much too overheated for even the flimsiest silk. Inside, the flat felt stuffy and close; there was the scent of coffee and of wet dog.

There was something else too, a faint odour of regret which was shifting over the floorboards and rugs.

A mother's regret at not having intervened earlier, not having given her sons authority to prevent her only daughter from making a mistake. Regret at being blinded by her love and fear of losing her daughter or pushing her away.

As Ginny walked into the room, she saw that her mother had come for her and she appeared exhausted by the effort. Her mother looked uncomfortable, folded up in that chair, her robes rumpled.

The dog roused and shook itself from sleep but Molly did not hear the clink of its colour. She did not hear Ginny come closer, and crouch beside her.

She was dreaming about Ginny though, and in her dream she was a young girl once again, surrounded by falling leaves, each one a brilliant yellow, as if fashioned from gold.

Molly did not wake up when Ginny took her hand. As soon as she opened her eyes and looked at her daughter's face, she wondered where she went wrong. Ginny was feeling guilty, that was what she saw, and guilt was not what Molly wanted.

"Mum, what are you doing here? What's wrong?" Ginny asked, concerned.

"You stopped coming for our family dinners and Sunday brunches for such a long time so I decided to see how you were. Can't a mother check up on her only daughter? See if she's alive?" Molly smiled, wearily.

"I was just busy, Ma." Ginny looked sheepish. "It's not that I don't love you."

Molly wondered how many times that phrase had been spoken, and how many people who had recited those words believed they were being kind. What made a person love another? That was what Molly wondered as Ginny told her that she would be extending her sabbatical from work – she had enough savings from working the past few years to more than manage for the next few years if she wanted to. Not that she was planning to stay away from work for that long. She loved being a healer. That was what she told her mother, reassuring her.

"I don't suppose you'd like to come back with me to The Burrow, spend the weekend?" Molly offered, as a last resort.

She was supposed to keep this idea herself until they had spoken at great length, but obviously she could not do that.

In spite of herself, Ginny laughed. Her mother never did like small talk.

"Should I take that as a yes?" Molly asked.

"Mother.." Ginny trailed off, bending forward to kiss her on her soft cheek the way she used to when she was small.

Ginny led her mother to her room and helped her into her bed, to grab a few hours of sleep.

When Molly woke, the bright sunshine, which blasted through the ice-covered windows, was blinding. She changed her robes so that she would look as though nothing was wrong when she went downstairs to greet her daughter good morning, speak cordially to her and even help prepare breakfast.

Ginny had been crying – her face was all puffy and her eyes were red. Looking at her, knowing that she was with Malfoy, and would continue to be with him, brought Molly immense sadness.

What would another mother do? Carry her off, make demands, stand there and cry until she gave in to her? Molly was not the same woman she was before The War.

Now, she was the woman who left a bag of galleons on the kitchen counter because she worried that her daughter would run out of money. She was the woman who hugged her daughter and kissed her on her forehead, before stepping into the fireplace and flooing back home. There was no point in staying any longer. All she could do was hope and pray to the ancestors of her family to keep Ginny safe.

----------------------------------LOVE ON EARTH----------------------------------

Ginny was dicing cucumbers for the salad when Draco apparated to her flat.

With Luna gone on her overseas assignment, Ginny had the entire flat to herself for three whole weeks. Once Draco had gotten wind of this bit of news, he had insisted on either she spending the entire time at Malfoy Manor or him coming over to her place. She had chosen the latter, never having liked the cold, enormous expanse of Malfoy Manor.

Draco came up behind her and circled his arms around her waist. Ginny could feel the heat from his body; even in places he was not touching her. Funny, but she was thinking about the sound of War in the battlefields, the trail of blood on the floor whenever a fresh wave of injured soldiers were brought in to St. Mungo's.

Draco kissed the back of her neck and held her against him

"You're not going to regret this," He told her, and Ginny felt herself sink against him.

When she followed Draco to the guestroom, Ginny did not dwell on how dinner had yet to be prepared, or how empty the flat felt.

There were lace curtains on all the windows in the guest bedroom and the white paint was luminous in daylight. The blue satin duvet on the quilt was the one Luna ordered from France, hand stitched and amazingly silky beneath your skin, and the bed was larger than the old wooden bed Ginny slept on.

On this bed, you dreamt things you did not discuss with anyone. Nights lasted longer on this bed; they began before dinner was served, before morning, before noon. Always, she dreamt she was falling and there was no way to stop.

It was celestial fornicating that went on here, the kind that overtook you so that you did not bother to lock the door or make certain the window shades were pulled down. It was the kind of consummation that made you cry out loud, made you beg, then dissolve, that urged you to do what you had never done before.

If someone knew you inside out, he knew when to start and when to stop. Do not think about the other women he had been with. Do not care if these women have felt absolutely certain they were the only ones, if he told them he never had it so good, not like this; if he did it again and again. You knew it had always been you - that was what he said and that was what you believed.

That was the way it was, wasn't it, when you were so young the future seemed limitless and it was impossible to tell where you ended and he begun.

Let the dog bark, let the hours pass by. It was all a dream and it was yours and it always would be. Give in to it, that was what he whispered. Don't bother bathing or combing your hair. Just do what he told you to, do it all night; go down on your knees and do it the way he liked it.

Let it last an eternity, because in all honesty, there was no going back.

--------------------------LOVE ON EARTH-----------------------------------------

Love made Oliver surprise himself. He never would have believed it possible, but it turned out he was a man who could walk up to a closed door on a murky November day, wearing one of his good set of robes, and knock without hesitation, waiting while the rain came down on him, even though he was not wanted.

He could do this and not think twice.

Oliver always wondered if other species fell in love. It seemed pure vanity to assume that love existed only on our terms. A single touch, after all, may be the ecstasy of a lifetime.

And so here he was, in love despite everything. It was he, stupider than any creature, and far more obstinate who had travelled all the way from his apartment near St. Mungo's, even though he fully expected to be turned away.

It was Malfoy who opened the door, and he stopped short when he saw Oliver.

"To what do we owe this pleasure?" He asked, as if he owned the flat but then again, in actual fact he owned almost all of Diagon Alley so Oliver would not be surprised if he happened to own this building as well.

His tone was reasonably agreeable but that was just not the way Oliver felt it.

"I was around the area so thought I'd say hello to Ginny." Oliver said.

Draco still did not open the door to invite him in. If it were anyone else, he would have slammed the door but since it was Oliver Wood, one of St. Mungo's renowned healers and Ginny's colleague, Draco smiled gamely.

"I think she's asleep," Draco had the nerve to say, even though it was not quite seven.

This lie might have passed if Ginny had not heard voices in the living room, then looked out her window and caught sight of Oliver standing on the front stoop. She pulled on her sweater and walked into the living room in her bare feet.

"Oliver! It's so nice to have you stop by," She said to him when she got to the door.

They never had company the past two weeks, and although Ginny told herself she did not miss a social life and having the flat like it always was; like King's Cross Station with people coming and going, she was inordinately pleased to see Oliver.

"I've been meaning to write to you but I never seem to get around to it."

Ginny had her hair pulled back, and she was wearing a heavy red sweater that grazed her thighs. He was surprised by how skinny she had become. The angles of her face looked more prominent. Her brown eyes were more intense. Ginny smiled when she caught Oliver staring and that was when he thought, It's love that's done this to her.

"I was wondering when you were going to come back to work..."

"Work?" She looked dazed for a minute, "Oh, yes, St. Mungo's."

Now Oliver knew what was wrong. Ginny seemed like a sleepwalker.

Wake up, he wanted to her tell. Open your eyes.

"Soon, I guess."

"Actually, there's something I'd like to discuss with you. I need some advice."

"Work regarding." He added as an afterthought, seeing the look on Malfoy's face.

"Well, come in." She was still beautiful when she smiled. "Have some tea."

"I'm sure he's in a hurry to get back to St. Mungo's and doesn't have time for tea," Draco said. "Isn't that a fact?"

Draco and Oliver looked at each other. Unless, Oliver was mistaken, and he rarely was about such things, there was an attempt at intimidation beneath the surface. He knew precisely what this man was trying to tell him. Don't fuck with me. Don't even try.

"Well, it's like this. The Aurors are investigating war crimes and they need certain patient records from that time and they're trying to issue an order to retrieve it-"

"But that's breaking the healer patient confidentiality." Ginny interrupted, looking every bit the passionate healer Oliver had known and grown to love.

Were Ginny's light brown eyes the element that always got to him? Was it the way her beautiful mouth twisted to one side when she smiled?

'That's just it. That's what I've been telling McCartney. He's the Auror in charge of this investigation. He says it's my call and since you were in charge of the St. Mungo's camp during the war with me, I decided to ask you."

'Don't let the Aurors get their hands on it, Oliver. It's against everything we stand for, as healers." Ginny said, with great conviction. Oliver nodded, grimly.

"Well then, seems like it's settled." Draco cut in.

Oliver was spending a little too long talking to Ginny and Draco did not like the look on his face.

"Yes, it is." Ginny looped her arm around Draco's waist.

Draco remained by the door till Oliver had walked off and was out of sight.

"Good riddance." He muttered.

"Draco, you insolent boy." Ginny laughed, hoping for humour but somehow her words felt flat.

When he closed the door, Draco pulled Ginny close and held her face against hers and whispered about why he wanted to be alone with her, how he wanted to take her to the bed and show how much he loved her, and Ginny felt less jittery about the way he had been acting.

But then Draco started talking about Oliver Wood and how Wood had better keep his dick in his pants. Did Draco always speak that way? Ginny truly could not remember. Did he always get angry so fast?

They were all pathetic, that was what he was saying now, all these wizards with their morality and false courtesy. He could buy them and sell them; he could do it in two seconds flat; he could have them down on their knees and begging, each and everyone, the ministry officials and shopkeepers alike, if he held out a big enough check.

And where did they get off looking at him, looking at Ginny? Where does that Oliver Wood think he was going, with his healer job and his goddamned smile?

"Trust me," Ginny said to him. "I don't know what Oliver looks like. Why should I? I'm only interested in you."

She kissed him then, hard and deep, but she had the nagging feeling that she was faking something. And worse – that she'd better.

Draco had always been jealous, she knew that. Well, so was she. If he did not want other men looking at her, so what? It was because he loved her, that was all. It was because he cared.

Ginny needed to concentrate less on the what ifs and more on the heres and nows. She needed to take pleasure in going day to day.

Since they have been living together at her place, they did not go out much, or at least Ginny did not. Ginny worked on her poems when Draco went off in the mornings to check his properties, and when he was at meetings in the afternoon.

It was a Sunday morning and Draco was preparing to go off for one of those meetings in London, this time an emergency meeting with his lawyer, something about a hurricane and his property in Wales.

Ginny was still in bed and Draco was in the shower, when she received a floo call. It was early and again Ginny felt anxious – she was afraid the caller would be Draco's lawyer, with bad news that would set him off. Or worse Oliver would decide to call her.

But it was Ken Hahn, the maintenance boy, notorious for his procrastination and pure laziness. He wanted to let her know that Luna had owled him about a month ago regarding a problem with the pipes under the sink.

"I can't promise I can save it." He told her, " But I can try."

Ginny bit back a smile. He had not even seen the pipes yet and he was already making excuses.

Ginny tugged the blanket tighter around herself as she crouched in front of the fireplace beside the bed. The satin quilt felt warm around her. She was only wearing panties and did not feel like getting out of bed but Ken seemed quite serious about the pipes. Besides, if he did not come down today, he might never do so in the near future.

"All right," Ginny agreed. "Come on over at around ten. After Draco leaves."

When Ginny crawled back into bed, she saw that Draco had been watching her.

He had a towel around his waist, his wet hair was plastered to his head and water was running down his pale skin in rivulets. The way he was staring at her made her feel guilty, about what, however, she was not certain.

"Hey," Ginny smiled. "Come back to bed."

He walked towards her without a word; he was amazingly quick or maybe it only seemed that way, but before Ginny knew it, he had torn the blue quilt off and had grabbed her by her wrists, wrenching her to her feet.

"Who the hell was that?" was what she thought he was shouting.

"Wait a second." Ginny said.

He was really hurting her; any more pressure would probably snap her wrist bones.

"Draco!" She said.

"Who was that in the fireplace?" He pulled her over to the dressing table, then shoved her against the mirror. The glass was icy cold against Ginny's bare skin.

"Who's coming over later?"

"It was Ken Hahn, the maintenance boy."

"Don't fuck with me, Ginevra." His voice sounded completely empty.

"I'm not." Her heart was beating much too fast, as if she was scared of him.

"I mean it."

"So do I. It was Ken. He's in charge of maintenance for the flats in this block." Thank Merlin it was only Ken, that was what Ginny was thinking. That was the one and only thought she could manage.

"Luna lodged a complain about the pipes below our sink leaking and he wanted to come over to fix it."

Draco looked at her closely. He might not believe her yet.

"It's been leaking for a while. Why couldn't you have asked me to repair it for you?"

"I just thought it was too trivial to bother you with." Ginny could feel herself sweet talking Draco.

That was what she was doing and it turned out she was quite good at it. Who would have guessed? She was not only a good liar, she was better than average at flattery.

Already, Draco was easing up on her wrists and she was no longer pushed against the mirror. She did not want to think about the way glass broke, a jagged unreliable shattering, so that you could never tell who would get hurt.

"It's just some stupid leak. I didn't think you'd be interested. Ken's just coming over, finally, the lazy boy. He'll have a look and do whatever need's to be done. That's all."

Draco was still looking at her, but the situation no longer seemed as dangerous.

Maybe it never was, Ginny thought. It probably never was.

He raised her wrists to his mouth, kissing the first one, then the other, right at the most delicate spot where the veins crisscross.

'I thought you went crazy on me." Ginny said, relieved.

It turned out her legs were shaking. They probably have been shaking all along, but she did not realise this fact until he drew her closer to the edge of the dressing table.

He kissed her, greedily. He knew how to kiss her so that her heart began to race and she stared to think forgiveness with every breath. Draco pulled Ginny nearer still, close enough so that he could ease off her panties and fuck her right there, without saying a word, without asking.

"Listen," He told her when he was done, "Tell Ken Hahn to do whatever's necessary. I don't mind paying to get the pipes repaired."

When Draco left, Ginny stood at the bedroom window. He did not hit her that was all she knew. He would not do that to her.

She watched Draco apparate some distance away. She knew what people said about his involvement in the mysterious killings during The War but she did not care.

He did not have the deatheater mark and that was all that mattered to her. He did not mean to hurt her. He would never do that.

Ginny showered for a long time, hoping to get rid of those cold, blue marks Draco left on her skin where he grabbed her and held on too tightly.

She pulled her hair back into an elastic band, and got dressed in an old thermal undershirt of Draco's and one of her simple robes over it.

She made tea and toast with butter but she was not really hungry. The way he twisted her wrists hurt and the way he fucked her hurt as well, but she was not going to think about that.

Nothing happened after all. Not really. It was just that some mornings you wanted breakfast and some mornings you did not.

--------------------------------------LOVE ON EARTH---------------------

When Hermione got a letter from Luna, via owl post, saying that she was extending her stay at Nepal till New Year's since Terry had come down to join her, she got worried. Hermione knew Malfoy had moved into Ginny's place. Everyone knew. She felt guilty as a friend for not going down to check up on Ginny sooner.

It was not as easy to go over as it was before, now that Ginny's flat was off the floo network. Temporary repair was the excuse Ginny had provided on one of her rare letters. Malfoy probably broke it himself, Hermione thought. Just the first of many good reasons to keep Ginny from the outside world and all to himself.

So she decided visit her that night when Luca was with his grandparents and Ron was working overtime.

"What do you want?" Draco said to her when he opened the door.

Hermione was so startled by the hostility of his tone that she took a step backward; she shaded her eyes against the light from the street lamp, the better to gauge his expression but there was nothing to see. Just an angry man staring down at her.

"Actually, I want to see Ginny," Hermione had said. "Is that a criminal offence or something?"

All she got for an answer was the wind, flapping between them. A loose shutter on the window banged back and forth.

Hermione could practically see Draco reach inside himself for a way to get rid of her, a lie to tell.

"What are you going to do, Malfoy? Call the Aurors and have me escorted off the property?"

Before he could respond, Ginny came to the door. She ran out to hug Hermione, then insisted on dragging her into the kitchen for a cup of tea.

'Why didn't you tell me 'Mione was here?" Ginny said to Draco. "You hate company, that's all there is to it."

She had thrown her arms around hIM, and Draco had let her kiss him. For an instant he had seemed happy, there in her embrace.

"He's all bark," Ginny said to Hermione as they headed into the kitchen.

'Oolong, right?" Ginny had remembered her friend's favourite tea.

"Right."

Draco had come in after them, but after he allowed Ginny to tease him about being antisocial, he withdrew to the living room. Still, Hermione had the sense he was listening.

"I'm worried about you." Hermione told Ginny after she had been served a mug of tea.

The flat was cold and dim; Ginny was wearing a huge grey sweater that looked like one of Draco's cast-offs.

"You're always worried about me." Ginny laughed as she sat across from her at the counter.

"Your mother's counting on you for Christmas brunch at The Burrow. Oh, and don't forget. New Year's Eve Party at my place. Everyone'll be there."

"Of course. I'll definitely be there for Christmas. But about the party...I have Draco to think about though."

"Bring him then," Hermione actually managed to sound cheerful.

Just because she had stopped pestering Ginny, did not mean Hermione had given up her research concerning Malfoy. She had gone down to the Aurors Department, but even with some strings pulled by Ron who was on the force, she found nothing.

It was if Malfoy never existed during those years during the War or maybe someone simply wiped the slate clean. Still, Hermione continued to feel if she only looked hard enough, she would turn up hard evidence against Malfoy, if not enough to send Ginny running for cover, then at least to make her think twice.

"He hates social gatherings like that." Ginny explained.

Not that her brothers would not kill him in the few seconds after he walked through the door.

"Even if Malfoy does not want to favour us with his company, you can still come for dinner by yourself."

"Easy for you to say." Ginny laughed.

"Extremely easy," Hermione was not laughing. "Nobody's telling me what to do."

"It's not what you think," Ginny said, "He's not like that. You know me, 'Mione. Do you think I'd let someone boss me around? At my age?"

Hermione did not respond. She had noticed that they were bruises all up and down Ginny's arms – in the dark they looked like purple butterflies, something pretty.

She wanted to cry then, weep for this woman she thought she knew, this woman who lied to her friends and let love do this to her.

"Now, do you see what's he like?" She looked up at Ginny, looking into her eyes.

"'Mione, you don't understand," Ginny began but then she realised she hoped her best friend would never ever have to understand.

"He doesn't mean any of that." Ginny said to her, "Not really."

Hermione looked at her and she felt an odd tenderness, the way one would feel when finished crying.

"Ginny," She said simply as if she were teaching sums to a six year old, " He certainly does."

Ginny knew he did things like that to cover up his insecurities and fears, that when she took him to bed, he would tell her he never really meant to hurt anyone and she would believe him.

'What has he done to deserve the love that you give him?" Ginny shrugged, feeling something awful settle at the pit of her chest.

"He knows that you'd do anything for him, give him your entire life. Doesn't that make you feel vulnerable?" Hermione asked, frustrated.

"I don't care..I'm so far beyond the point of caring." Ginny felt a weird sort of sensation inside her; it was as if something was being boiled as she heard the words come out of her mouth.

"You have to care...deep down inside you, you do care about the fact that you gave up such a huge part of yourself to him – your pride, your self-respect."

"I love him, 'Mione. That's all that matters." It was true too. He overshadowed everything else in her life, everything else.

"I hope you're right." Hermione wished she could do more, shake Ginny to her senses but she knew she could not. Ginny had to look inside herself and come to her own senses.

When she hugged Ginny later, she noticed the scent of lavender, a sad odour in Hermione's opinion, one that marked the past and all things best forgotten. Most likely they were traces of lavender cologne on the sweater, and the fragrance now clung to its new owner.

In the end, what a friend wanted for herself, that was what you wanted for her as well. Good fortune in all things, that was what Hermione wished for Ginny, and no mistake so terrible it could not be rectified.

**---------------------------------------------TBC**

A/N NOTE THANK YOU, babes and mates for you wonderfully sincere reviews The ---------Love on Earth---------- is a special divider I created for this chapter, to separate each part from another. I have one more part to go to this story, followed by an epilogue What is your definition of a happy ending? If it is happily ever after, then yes..there is a happy ending..for some characters at least.. I'm glad you like the poems..hope you like this one..my personal favourite Ginerva or Ginevra…I really don't know so I'm just going to use both.. As for the whole if Draco's a killer thingy – it will be solved in time so stay TUNED! **REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW….GIVE ME TILL SIXTY**


	5. Part Five

**LOVE ON EARTH**

**PART FIVE**

* * *

**Summary: This dark, romantic tale asks whether it is possible to survive a love that consumes you. The answers that Ginerva Weasley discovers are heartbreaking and wise, as complex as they are devastating. For in our dreams, love is simple and glorious but it is something absolutely different here on earth… (a BIT AU)**

**DSCLAIMER: NOTHING is mine…**

* * *

_The purity that is you_

_I do not see anymore._

_The tangible darkness I do_

_The voluminous black want shimmering in the air_

_Mine or yours – who really knows._

_Maybe it is me that desires such_

_Maybe it is you that needs to be such_

_A tangle of 'maybe's, a clash of perceptions._

_Your shadow or you_

_The light or the darkness_

_The brilliance or the madness_

_The human or the demon _

_Which does the heart desire?_

- Anonymous

* * *

Ginny hated how dark it got nowadays, pitch black by as early as four; she despised how small her life had become, how poor. 

On Christmas, there had been no exchange of gifts, no usually putting up of Christmas Tree as she and Luna usually did the day before.

Only the brunch at The Burrow had lifted her spirits. The Burrow had been crowded even without her presence. All her brothers, their wives or girlfriends, their children and of course Harry and Susan were there. She brought coffee cake that she had spent the morning baking.

She helped her Mum, Hermione and Angelina in the kitchen, ladling chowder from the pot into the tureen. Hermione had to remove the oyster stuffing from the cooling turkey.

"Malf- Draco did not want to come?" Molly asked, wanting to make the effort, at least for her daughter.

"He hates polite society, and opted for peace and quiet."

"Well, I'm sure polite society hates him right back." Angelina cut in, being brutally honest.

"Well, at least he let you come." Hermione commented.

"You wouldn't have wanted him here, considering how you feel. All of you." Ginny looked straight at Hermione and Harry who popped into the kitchen to pour some cold Chablis from the fridge into a wine glass for himself and Susan.

"I told her about your theory." Hermione admitted to Harry quietly, so that Molly who was busy arguing with Angelina about the recipe for her apple brown Betty, would not hear them.

"I'm glad you did." Harry said.

"You are?" Hermione was surprised and rather relieved.

"I am, although I know Ginny well enough to know that she would make her own choices no matter what we say, right Gin?" He flashed her an amiable smile.

"That's right." Ginny agreed. "So I'd appreciate you all butting out, unless you're willing to let me take over your lives."

"Touché." Harry commented, squeezing Ginny's arm reassuringly before walking off.

Molly watched Harry walk off, and remembered in the old days before the War, how she used to wish for Harry to marry Ginny and be her son-in-law. Now, she was sensible enough to know that would never have worked out. Arthur always used to tell her just that. He always had a good feel about things, that he did. She missed his good judgement and balanced thinking sometimes.

"Are you okay, Mum?" Ginny asked.

Molly had a house full of guests and she was standing there, doing nothing, with a glass of gillywater in her hand.

"Perfectly fine."

Bill came in then. 'There's the turkey," He said.

It was his holiday task now that his father was no longer around – to carve. Molly had left out the knife Arthur liked best and the large silver fork, which belonged to her mother.

As usual Bill was wearing his best robes and seemed too tall for the kitchen. He carved the turkey, teasing the women as they travelled back and forth to the dining room bringing out platters of food. Fleur smacked him in the butt when he talked too much, and his oldest daughter, Trisha, a sprightly four year old copied her mother, receiving a kiss on the forehead from her father as a punishment.

For a while, Ginny felt as if this were the good old days, before The War had taken its toll on them, before she had met Draco and fallen for him.

It was not as if he did not care. He had after all, insisted she went for Brunch without him. "I want you to have fun," Draco had told her before she left, "Enjoy yourself."

She did have fun, the entire brunch capped off with her mother's delicious fruitcake, eggnog and exchange of presents. When she finally flooed back to her flat, it was late in the evening and she had overeaten like never before.

That was the only highlight in her dreary days. Anything could fuel an argument between Draco and Ginny now.

She looked at him the wrong way, she interrupted his work, she breathed; she was somehow not enough his. His ardour had not cooled but often his flesh would not comply with his spirit's demands. When he could not make love to her, he insisted it was her fault.

She felt sorry for him; Draco saw it on her face. That was what made him angry beyond reason. Well pity was meaningless, that's what he had been taught. It's what you do that counted.

She never did as he said and she had taken to fighting back, which was foolish. When she left the room, she slammed the door behind her, behaviour that gave him all the more reason to vent his anger on her or use it as a reason to go to one of the women in Hogsmead who were so willing to pretend he belonged to them, if only for a few hours.

When he came home, he blamed Ginny even for that. She had sent him into another woman's arm; she forced him to stray. _Why did she do this to him? To them?_ After he was done berating her, he turned his fury on himself, and that of course, was the thread that always tied Ginny to him; that was the moment she always went to him and held him. _No one will ever love you the way I do_, that was what he told her then_. No one can have you if I can't. Don't even think about leaving. I mean that. Don't even try._

* * *

On New Year's Eve, Oliver was supposed to go to a party but at the last minute he decided to skip it. He was already wearing his formal dark navy dress robes and had combed his hair, but it was Ginny he wanted be with, not his friends from work.He planned to watch some muggle televsion and go to sleep early yet when he imagined Ginny, in her flat all alone, or worse with Malfoy, he could not abandon the idea of seeing her. 

In spite of himself, he got restless and wound up apparating to Diagon Alley.

Ginny was glad that Draco left early, instead of a few hours before midnight as he planned to, right before Luna was to arrive back from Nepal.

He had made her promise to come over to the Malfoy Manor at around ten, after Luna had arrived, to spend the night. They had decided, well he had proposed it actually and she had numbly agreed to move into the Malfoy Manor with him. They would give it a trial run from tonight itself. Then if she liked it enough, she could move in with her things over the following week. The latter part had been due to her clever cajoling and negotiating.

Thus, she was glad for this reprieve from Draco. Maybe absence would make the heart grow fonder. Besides, she was tired and was grateful for some peace and quiet. At least it gave her all evening to brighten the place up, with a few random decorations and maybe even put up the Christmas Tree for Luna's sake, since she had always liked their flat to look as festive as the season – it kept the dreariness of winter out according to her.

That was what she was doing when Oliver knocked on the door – using her wand to hang up tinsels on the corners of the ceiling.

"Hey," He smiled, grateful that Malfoy had not come to the door.

Ginny's fiery red hair had slipped out of her rubber band. The huge quidditch t-shirt she was wearing hung off her shoulders, exposing her creamy petite shoulders. She was beautiful all right, and seemed even more beautiful each time he saw her.

'Hey!" She grinned, filled with a sudden urge to hug him. "What are you doing here?"

"To check in on you, see you."

"Come in." She held the door open.

As he stepped in, he noticed the apartment looked a lot brighter than the last time he had seen it – dim and cold.

"It's New Year's Eve. Shouldn't you be out with your friends?" She asked, tilting her head to one side.

"Aren't you my friend?" He shot back, turning around to face her after hanging up his cloak. His sweetness always astounded Ginny.

"Well, I've been putting up decorations." She waved at the work in progress.

"I can help. I see you're having trouble with the fairy lights." He gestured to the entangled pile of lights.

She laughed, nodding. Her laughter still felt like a phoenix song to him.

As he knelt down to work on the fairy lights, "You want some butterbeer? I think we have a few bottles left in the pantry." She asked.

"Sure."

"I think I should get a few." She muttered, more to herself than him. "Luna's coming back and she'll want one."

"Finish it all. It's New Year's Eve." He shot her a disarming grin.

Ginny smiled back, feeling seriously light-headed. She did not have to worry about Draco dropping in – chances were zero to nil since he knew Luna would be returning tonight and would be seeing Ginny later anyway. For a while she could at least enjoy herself and pretend as if these were the good old days when no one owned her, but herself.

"I'm starving too." Ginny realised, as if she had suddenly woken up and become aware of her body's natural urges. 'Would you like me to whip up some pizza?"

"I'd love it." Oliver's eyes sparkled. She wondered why she had never noticed what an amazing murky brown his eyes were.

* * *

A light snow had begun. Flakes caught on the windows and stuck on like glue. In very little time, everything was covered with a blanket of white. When Ginny and 

It was a beautiful night when Oliver went out to hang the fairy lights above the door and front stoop, with music floating into the street from her own flat as well as flats nearby.

It took them a few seconds to have the entire exterior of their flat glittering festively with fairy lights.

That was when Luna apparated with a loud 'pop' right beside Oliver.

"Oh!" She said, taking in the sight of Oliver standing beside Ginny.

Luna was wearing a violet sweater decorated with rhinestones and a short purple skirt. She looked beautiful tonight, flushed, breathless and a little drunk.

"What are you doing here?"

"Don't we get a hello?" Ginny joked, embracing her friend who hugged her back.

'You still haven't answered me." Luna persisted, looking at Oliver.

"Came to visit Gin. Haven't seen her in a long time. That's all." He smiled, avoiding the shrewd girl's protuberant eyes.

"Oh well, that's good." She looped her arm through Ginny's, taking a closer look at her best friend who looked weary but seemingly happy, at least for now.

Ginny knew Luna was checking her out; her clothes, after all, were not nice enough for company, and she did not think to do anything about her hair. She was living with the richest wizard in the country and look at what she was wearing – her old, oversized quidditch T-shirt and Oliver's coat over it.

They walked through the snow and went in through the unlocked front door. It was hot in the flat – there was a scent of butterbeer and pizza. Noisy too with music blaring from the enchanted radio Ginny had purchased years ago.

"Seems like there was a party going in here. How come you didn't invite me?" Luna teased, dumping her duffel bags on the floor

"You've got to try the pizza." Ginny told her. "It's made with pesto and feta cheese."

Luna did just that, reaching for one of the remaining slices of pizza lying on a platter on the coffee table.

"Keep some for Terry. He's coming over soon." Ginny nodded, proceeding to finish hanging up the ornaments on the Christmas tree.

She refused Oliver's help, Weasley stubborn pride kicking in, insisting she was tall enough to put up the string of singing elves on the uppermost branches, without the use of magic. Every time she reached up to do so, Oliver would purposely tickle her at her ribs, causing her to giggle hapless and fall back into his arms.

Luna watched them from the kitchen, smiling to herself. Hearing Ginny laugh like that made her feel so much better. She knew about Hermione's New Year Eve Party. Ginny had told her that she would not be going, not just because of how Malfoy would feel if he found out but because she needed some time by herself.

Luna knew better. That was what had brought her home today – she had wanted to bring Ginny some festive cheer. She had even told Terry when they set foot on British soil to bring good food and any of his friends over to their place so that they could have a sort of party. But it seemed, fate too, had been thinking along those same lines.

"AAAH! Oliver STOP!" Ginny screeched, amidst laughter as Oliver chased her around the living room threatening to tickle her for turning his hair pink with a well-placed charm.

Luna conjured up a platter of mini-knishes and headed to the living room, Gentle having risen from a nap, at her feet.

"Stop it, children." She chided them.

Ginny threw a strand of tinsel at her. Just as a good-looking man stepped through the fireplace.

"You all know Terry." Luna said, as he lopped his arm around her waist.

"Sure, I remember. Michael's friend. DA at Hogwarts." Ginny said, smiling at him.

"How's Michael?" Ginny asked, out of courtesy.

"Fine, He's Chudley Cannon reserve Keeper." Terry said.

"This man must be starving," Oliver nodded at Terry. "He's started to drool." He commented, amiably. They all laughed when they saw how Terry was staring at the platters of pizza and knishes, as rapt as Gentle.

"Have a seat." Oliver motioned Terry towards the couch, across from him.

"I'll make some more pizza." Ginny offered, for the few remaining slices were fast disappearing.

"You'd better. I bumped into Harry and Susan. They said they'd be dropping by close to midnight. The party at Ron's was getting a bit too crowded." Terry informed them.

"Let's go into the kitchen." Luna told Ginny.

It was broiling in the kitchen – Oliver and Ginny had spent all evening cooking pizzas using a combination of magic and a muggle oven which had been turned on high to cook the pizzas – but Ginny was shivering. Luna, after referring to the recipe book, had promptly conjured up another plate heaped with pizza.

"Are you okay?" She asked.

Ginny nodded, smiling tiredly. Suddenly starving all over again, she reached for the plate of food. As she did so, Luna saw a circle of purple bruises on her arm, leftovers of a disagreement they had last night when Draco came home after midnight and refused to say where he had been. _I'm not your servant_, he had snapped at Ginny as though she was a harping wife, _I don't have to account to you._

"Are you going to tell me its anaemia?" Luna asked.

"It was nothing."

Luna laughed. She could not help herself. "Ginny. That's what they all say."

"No, it really was nothing," Ginny insisted. "We were arguing and he grabbed me. Believe me, if he ever hit me, I'd be gone."

"Eat," Luna suggested, "You look like you haven't eaten since I left." She watched Ginny devour a slice of pizza, before heading back to the living room.

There was a countdown to midnight on the radio. Terry had made himself comfortable on the couch, so that he could concentrate on eating.

There was the food he had bought on the way here – smoked salmon on crackers, bluefish pate, marinated mushrooms, French Brie. He was eating so fast and so much that Gentle was now stationed by his feet.

"If you slow down," Oliver advised as he sat beside Terry, "you could fit more food in. You should try the pizza." Terry did not hesitate in doing so, when Luna placed the refilled plate in front of him.

'He eats like his horse." Luna commented, affectionately, ruffling his hair. Oliver laughed, glancing at Ginny who stood apart from them, staring out through the window. When was the day, she would look at him like that?

"Look who's here!" Ginny cried out, delighted, moving towards the door, to throw it open and invite her brothers and their friends in.

"We were told there's a more happening party going on here." Fred exclaimed as he strolled in, his arm looped around Alicia's waist.

Katie, Angelina, George, Harry and Susan all trailed in behind them, everyone dressed in their finest robes or trendiest clothes.

"The food's great!" Oliver stood up, grinning at his former quidditch mates.

Ginny had never seen him like this before – eyes shining, wide, handsome grin on his face looking so very earnest and happy and dashingly good looking.

"Hey, our Quidditch captain!" Katie crowed, initiating a group hug, by throwing her arms around Oliver.

"Where's everyone else?" Ginny asked Harry who came over to hug her.

"At Ron's. The house is filled to the brim. Susie wanted a less crowded affair so we decided to come over. The twins are here cos the fire whiskey supply kinda ran out over there."

Ginny laughed. "Well, they'll be disappointed then."

* * *

A while later, Oliver could barely make his way to kitchen. It was getting pretty crowded in the flat; all the neighbours had decided to pop in after hearing all the noise, even people Ginny insisted she barely knew from the neighbouring block had come over. He was doing his best to elbow his way past the bar Fred and George set up in the corner near the front window, when he saw Malfoy apparate outside the flat. 

"Shit." Oliver thought, realising that the one person who could possibly ruin this wonderful night had arrived.

Draco came in through the front door, wearing a black overcoat made of soft Italian wool, bringing in cold air and suspicion. He stopped to greet two members of the Ministry of Magic, to whom he made sizeable contributions, but his eyes flickered over the room.

Before he could spy Oliver, Oliver made his way to the kitchen.

"Malfoy's here." He told Ginny.

Ginny had been sitting at the counter with Susan, Luna and Lavender giggling like teenage girls while sipping butterbeer.

Upon the flood of guests earlier, she had retreated to her room to change. She came out wearing a black sweater decorated with glitters and pearls, and a red skirt. _Too festive?_ She had asked him. _Do I look like a __Christmas__ Tree?_ He thought he had never seen anyone quite so beautiful. _No. Wear it_, he had told her. _Wear it_ he had said when all he had really wanted was to undress her, right there in the living room, with the guests milling about around them.

She looked at Oliver now and glanced at the clock hung on the wall. It was thirty minutes past eleven; well past the time she was supposed to have apparated to Malfoy Manor. Without saying a word, she went to the back door and wrenched it open. She was so panicked she did not even think of grabbing her coat. Draco was probably walking through the living room right now.

"Wait a second," Luna said, grabbing Ginny's arm and holding her back. "The man you're planning to live with is here and you're running out the back door. Think about it, Ginny."

"You don't understand." Ginny said. She has said this so often it probably sounded ridiculous but it was true.

"He'll see my still being here with you all as a betrayal. He'll see me as one of you."

Oliver who had been standing by quietly, watching this scene unfold, seeing the fear in Ginny's beautiful eyes, realising for the first time what had actually been going on between Malfoy and Ginny, felt scathing white hot anger flash through him.

He moved forward, side stepping Lavendar and Susan who were watching all this morbidly fascinated and not entirely apathetic.

"If you want, you could leave and spend the night at my place. He won't find you there. I won't let him lay a finger on you." Oliver was so earnest and so sincere that Ginny wanted to cry. But instead she laughed.

It was not that simple. You did not just walk away from this kind of a man, this type of love – love that reeled you in and held your soul captive till you had nothing left but a mere shadow of yourself.

That was what Draca saw when he came into the kitchen – Ginny laughing at the back door – and that did not please him one bit.

Earlier that evening, Draco met Rosalyn at Three Broomsticks; then they went over to her place but he let her know that he had to be home before ten.

And then, after all that, when he got back to Malfoy Manor, no one was there. He had waited for her for close to an hour before giving up and coming over to see what was holding her up. That obviously did not please him.

Draco noticed Oliver then and privately wondered if perhaps the man had taken it too much on himself to think about business that was none of his business.

"Hey, everyone." He said, as though he was not annoyed in the least. "Great party."

"Yeah, too bad you weren't invited." Oliver said.

Draco grinned at that. "Aren't you afraid you'll hurt my feelings?"

"Nope." Oliver stared right back at him. He was not fooled by Malfoy's pleasant manner and never would be.

Draco ignored him, leaning closer to Ginny and kissed her, right in front of all of them. His lips were cold and there was snow in the folds of his coat.

"You're the most beautiful woman here," He said. "As usual."

You could not even tell that Ginny was nervous. She laughed, and then had a sip of wine.

"We'd better head out." Draco told her.

He said it easily, but he did not mean it that way. Nothing was easy with Draco. Ginny looked at him closely. The evidence was in his eyes, eyes that she loved – those two ocean grey whirlpools that sucked her in now and again. That was where the anger was.

"You could spend the night at my place." Lavender offered.

She had taken to Ginny ever since working with her on a project on Magical Maladies a year ago and seeing her like this made Lavender wonder about the things love could do to someone.

Draco laughed. "Aren't you girls a little too old for pyjama parties?"

Ginny hugged Lavender. "Thanks," She said, "Another time."

"You can come back anytime you want to." Luna murmured to her, as they hugged, in a low voice so that Draco had to strain to hear. She knew about Ginny's future living arrangements with Malfoy and to say she disapproved was an understatement. "You know that."

By the time, Ginny got to the front door, Draco was waiting with her coat and scarf. There was confetti in the air and slow music playing, but Draco paid no attention. He held open the door for March, and then let it slam once they were out of the house.

"Don't ever do that to me again," He said, as they started down the snowy walkway leading to the sidewalk.

They could still hear voices from the party drifting out of her place. Draco was so furious that the air around him popped.

"You should have been there when I got home, but you weren't, and that's the problem." He grabbed her by the arm, to make his point, to make certain she was listening and to reel her in, closer.

"I don't like an empty house," He said, in a voice so mean it was barely recognisable.

Ginny heard the front door slam as another guest left the part. Some man had stepped out into the porch and Ginny was mortified to think of the tableau which greeted the stranger: an angry man, a woman who looked frightened, snow falling, ice on the herringboned brick path.

"What are you looking at?" Draco faced the stranger, whom Ginny instantly recognised as Harry.

He had been about to take his gloves from his overcoat pocket but he stopped when saw Malfoy holding on Ginny.

"Hey, Malfoy," He said to Draco, his voice soft as thought he was talking to some maniac, "Come on. Ease up on Gin. It's New Year's Eve."

Harry was fingering his wand in his pocket, just in case, planning to hex Malfoy if necessary. Even with all his Auror training and seeker reflexes, he hoped he could do the right thing and not aid in the situation spiralling out of control.

Ginny blinked back her tears. That was how they looked to him: a couple on the edge. A woman who was about to be hurt somehow. And maybe Harry was right. When it came down to it, who was she anyway? The woman she thought she was or the woman she appeared to be?

"What did you call her?" Draco said.

He let go of Ginny and took a step towards the front porch. Draco got that look on his face Ginny knew too well. He was in a mood, he would not back down; he was thinking only of the doors that were closed to him, not of how they were all opened now.

He used to talk this way to Harry, Ron and their friends when they tossed hurtful words and curses at him back in Hogwarts, making him feel that whatever he had was not really his or he was even worth it. He did not have to listen to that. Not anymore.

Ginny was breathing frigid night air but she was burning up inside. What she wanted was for Harry to go back to the party – then she and Draco could walk away from this without any permanent damage. She wanted this so badly she could taste it, but the taste was bitter, a cold soup of stones.

The door behind Harry opened again, and light flooded the walkway. Susan and some other witch Ginny did not know were leaving the party, laughing but the laughter fell onto the ice and onto the sidewalk where it cracked open into the silence.

"Honey?" Susan called when saw her husband and Draco facing off.

"Harry?" She blinked several times, as if what she was seeing in front of her, could not possibly be so.

"Let's go." Ginny said. She grabbed Draco, but he jerked away.

When he turned to her, she swore she did not know him.

"Are you telling me what to do?" Draco asked.

Harry was shaking his head, signalling to Susan not to intervene for they would most likely make it worst. Instead, they stood there in silence. All anyone could hear was snow falling.

"Please," His most favourite word in the world and Ginny knew it.

"Please." She whispered so Harry, Susan and the other woman would not see that she was begging.

It was still possible to hear the festivities inside the house. Someone must have told a joke, because several people were laughing, and the laughter circled upward. In spite of the snow, Ginny could see the stars in the sky, the way she used to when she and Ron dragged the ladder out to the chestnut tree in The Burrow and climbed as high as they could when they were kids.

As they walked towards the alleyway nearby to apparate back to The Malfoy Manor, Ginny could stop shaking; as if she had a rare disease for which there was no definite diagnosis. Maybe it was terror, maybe it was regret, and maybe it was only the cold night, the last of the year. Her mouth was so parched that her lips hurt.

When they got to the house, the snow was coming down harder and they trudged their way to the stately pillared entrance. All through that short walk, Ginny tried to see Draco in the same way but she had before, but she could not. No matter what she did, matter how she tried there was a man of more than twenty five who still had no idea what he had done to them.

When they reached the house, they went upstairs to the master bedroom. They did not have to speak. Draco after all was tired and frankly Ginny was too. As Draco unlaced his boots, Ginny watched him. He looked so old tonight, so completely worn out. Would she even recognise him if she met him on a crowded street? Would she know him at all?

Looking at him now, Ginny saw that the boy she loved, the one who cried in front of her and let down his guard to her was no longer inside him. She was not certain if this Draco, this man beside her, was even capable of crying.

That boy before The War was separate from this man now. He had taken on a life of his own. There he was, sitting at the foot of the bed, moving aside so Draco could pull down the quilt and get in between the sheets.

Ginny lay down beside Draco but she kept her eyes trained on that boy, the one who stared back at her in the Grand Hall, the one who still had a bit of soul, heart and idealism left in him, the one she loved beyond all time and reason.

Just as she suspected, he was tired too. He rested his beautiful head, then closed his eyes, just like he did all those years ago at the St. Mungo's camp during The War.

Ginny tried her best to be quiet; she did not cough, did not move. She listened for the sound of Draco's even breathing, and soon enough there it was, slow and easy.

The boy she loved was curled up on the extra quilt, lonely, the way he would always be, with or without her. He told her once he did not trust anyone, and he never would. He told her he never meant to hurt her and that, she knew, was true.

Although it was not easy to leave that boy on the edge of the bed, Ginny grabbed her clothes and boots and went to dress in the dark hallway. Everything Ginny saw was a shadow in the dark, even herself: her scarf, her hand turning the doorknob, the way she shivered when she felt the cold against her skin.

She slipped out the door quietly so that the house elves sleeping in the kitchen nearby would not hear her. When she got the end of the driveway, she turned to look at he house. In truth, she never liked Malfoy Manor. As majestic and splendid it looked from the outside, it was actually a cold place live in, cold in spirit, cold in each and every room.

If Ginny did not know better, she could have sworn as she stood there, staring at the house that a boy with wheat blond hair framing his chiselled face, dark robes billowing about him, his hood thrown back over his shoulders, was standing in the place where roses used to grow. If she did not know better, she would hesitate. Instead, she turned and ran.

Tonight she would have to change the flat's location on the floo network so that Draco would not try to use it to come over. She would get Luna to help her put up wards all over the place.

But as she does all this, she knows deep down he would not come and get her. Not this time. Not after she left him in the dead of the night. His Malfoy pride would keep him away.

He would wait though, thinking and believing that she would return to him. This Ginny was sure of – he would think that it was only a matter of time before she was back with him and he would wait.

As she sat huddled up by the fireplace that night, she wondered if she would return as Draco expected her to. It was a doubt that would undoubtedly plague her over the next few days, weeks, and maybe even months and years till it got too much and maybe _then_, she would go back to him. _Maybe_.

For now, Ginny did not know and definitely was not sure…of herself, or of anything else for that matter.

TBC

* * *

**A/N NOTE**

**this is the last chapter before the Epilogue which will be coming right up (At twenty more reviews) which will explain Draco's involvement in The War and what will happen to them after this..**

**Will they get back together? Will they not? What do you readers want? Please let me know** **any questions, doubts about this chapter please ask me..****comments about the poem gladly welcome**

**Some parts are supposed to be in italics but they aren't so apologies if you don't understand certain parts. I can't seem to use the editing program on ..don't worry I'll edit it once I can..** **REVIEW REVIEW REVIEW, BABES AND MATES!**


	6. Epilogue

**LOVE ON EARTH**

* * *

**Summary: This dark, romantic tale asks whether it is possible to survive a love that consumes you. The answers that Ginny Weasley discovers are heartbreaking and wise, as complex as they are devastating. For in our dreams, love is simple and glorious but it is something absolutely different here on earth. (Based on Alice Hoffman's novel Here on Earth)**

**DSCLAIMER: NOTHING is mine…**

* * *

_Bright light stripping wood_

_Glancing off luminous metal_

_Like rays straight from the sun itself._

_So goes the expounding, expanding heat_

_Filtering into the heavy head_

_Lost in its pure thoughts of loneliness._

_She lies in her own blood _

_Without the other half._

_He wanders through it all_

_Ignorant as to why_

_That missing rib still missing._

_A foot without the other is not feet_

_So goes eyes, ears, hands, and legs._

_In pairs the world is created_

_The sweet sanctimony of twos_

_One makes up for what the other lacks._

_The duality of nature_

_In its birth and its death_

_Pounding through the soul of the universe._

* * *

_**EPILOGUE**_

"You did not make him earn it." Luna had told her the next day.

"No, I thought he deserved it." Ginny spoke, referring to her love for Draco.

"That's presumptuous." Luna had said.

"That's love for you…I thought he was so right for me." She muttered, staring out through the window.

That was how she spent those listless days, half hoping he would come for her and half hoping he never had come into her life. She never returned to work as a healer, spending her time penning poems filled with angst and longing. She spent so much time by that window, before she knew it the pane of glass had become her universe, the empty road her fate.

After almost a year, she no longer recognised herself when she looked in the mirror. She had cut off most of her waist long red hair which Draco loved so that it was as short as a boy's and though she had intended it to make herself look ugly, she ended up revealing her pretty neck that gave Oliver a shivery feeling under his skin, making him feel overheated when he first saw her like that.

Oliver had visited her during that year when she had been attempting to get over Draco. She never thought much of it. Besides, he was her colleague and obviously wanted her back on the team at St. Mungo's. So it made perfect sense for him to call on Ginny, bring candy, books or fresh ink and parchment for her writing, as if getting over Draco was not unlike recuperating from some horrible illness.

Ginny might never have noticed that Oliver was courting her, in his own mild way, if not for the night of Luna and Terry's wedding. The wedding was held on New Year's Eve, the year Ginny turned twenty five.

On the night of the wedding, Ginny was alive enough to overhear many of the guests whisper their opinion of her. _What a sorry thing she was_, that was what they were saying. _Wasting away, growing old before her time. Only twenty-five and so pretty too, behaving little more than a ghost. Look, at the way her hands had begun to shake._

To console herself, Ginny drank five glasses of Mrs. Boot's firewhiskey laced cranberry punch, then gave in and danced with Oliver.

Oliver was so tall that Ginny could not look him in the eye as they danced and perhaps that was best, since she would have been extremely surprised to discover how ardent his expression had become. She had always thought pity and friendly concern were Oliver's motivation but the way he held his arms around her and the slow sound of his breathing informed her otherwise. Still she was not sure.

Until she stood by Luna, resplendent in her cream peach wedding gown, waiting for their photo to be taken.

Oliver walked by then, and he glanced over at them, smiling. Ginny had smiled back.

Luna shook her head to herself. Some people did not see what was right there in front of them, even if they had twenty twenty vision. Some people needed to be led by their hands or they would miss the important facts of their own lives. "That's one man who's been in love with you since forever." Luna had informed Ginny.

Even then Ginny was not sure. She did not want to risk it all over again. She had realised, through the past year that true love should not hurt when you fall, and she had hurt herself so bad when she fell for Draco. She never wanted to get hurt that much again.

After the wedding, Oliver began to appear several times a week at The Burrow, where Ginny had moved back in since Luna had vacated their flat and Ginny did not desire to reside alone.

He bought her boxes of apricots and books on poetry. He presented her with potted tulips from Holland and fancy Vermont Maple Syrup. He stopped coaxing her to come back to work but instead started convincing her to publish her poems. Often, when he came over in the evenings he insisted on helping to cook dinner. He would act as Mrs. Weasley's assistant, dicing carrots and peppers.

Ginny confided in him much more than she would have imagined, and revealed herself in many ways, even telling him that she often awoke from sleep with tears in her eyes, or that she sometimes heard Draco's voice inside her own head. He always listened to her during those times, taking her hands in his.

Ginny watched Oliver sometimes as he sat in their living room and read from one of his healing research textbooks, and he looked so familiar and comfortable she felt like weeping. At the same time, whenever she saw him coming up the gravel pathway to the house, or when the hand of the clock moved towards five in the evening, she felt his impending presence like a heat on the line of her skin and a certain light headedness enveloped her.

Could it be she never noticed the way he looked at her, that he had been following her? Love was not like that, was it? Just sitting there in the back drawer for all those years like a shirt you had never bothered to try on but which was still there, neat and pressed and ready to wear at a moment's notice.

Whatever it was, on her twenty eighth birthday, on the equinox day of March, when lambs were said to be able to lie beside lions, when the spring fever was so thick in the air that all the Weasley grandchildren were running wild everywhere, Ginny Weasley married Oliver Wood.

Ginny had realised that this was the kind of love that was for her – the quieter kind of love that looked boring on the surface, that was there whether it was a bad day or a good day; the kind of love when you knew that this was someone you could be yourself around and they would love you anyway, sometimes not in spite of your worse characteristics but because of them, the kind of lover you knew would stay with you through thick and thin and make you feel valued always, the kind of love that survived on earth.

* * *

Lately, Draco has begun to have those dreams about those men, lying awake in their sleep, those awful dreams that wakes him in the middle of the night and leaves him out of breath and sweaty and ready to run. 

He supposes that you cannot really kill a man in his sleep. That was something not even animals did. You kill a man asleep, just as you would a cow or a sheep but somehow it was not the same. It was uglier. It gives you nightmares, year in and year out and maybe even for the rest of your life.

If you are going to do it, Draco knows, do it speedily and in the dark. Plan it out carefully, and be aware of what hours the guards keep. Make certain to get half your money up front because this was after a deal with the Dark Lord himself. Make sure it was a great deal of money because the Dark Lord had a lot to gain out of it. That was why the Dark Lord even forfeited giving him the deatheater mark.

All Draco had to realise was a single indelible fact: just because you walk away after you have been paid does not mean you will not be dreaming about it afterwards, when you were no longer as hungry or as young.

Here was the thing about killing a sleeping man – the final gasp of air was so muted, so silent it was worse than the screams produced by a man during battle. Use a silencing charm, work fast; be sure you were done and over the enemy lines before they even realised they were dead and not just sleeping.

It was a lot of money for someone with no heart, no option and burdened by responsibilities that were not even his own. It was a small fortune, if you could stand the way they sounded, like a baby's whimper, when you slit their throat, piercing the jugular vein with a knife you spent the entire day sharpening.

These men continue to follow Draco while he sleeps, plaguing him with guilt and grief. Kill something and it's yours forever. At night, you will be at your victim's mercy, but that is only temporary.

Dreams are after all, worthless things – Draco knows that. They cannot reach you on the street where you walk; they can only torment a man with a conscience, anyone who allows it.

Now that those dreams are back, Draco often gets out of bed in the dark. He slams through the front door and stands at the porch, appreciating what is around him. He has always favoured October, with its gloomy, cold core and he can never get enough of looking over his land. Why should he not appreciate all that he owns? He gave up everything for this land, so he might as well stand here and feel that it was his.

But why does he still feel so poor? Why is he waiting for Ginny to appear at his porch, her red hair midway down her back, her brown eyes shining with emotion for him?

That was when he would recall his other dream, a dream he had often and was as bad as the dreams of the men he killed.

In this dream, Ginny walks through his door, kneels by his bed and waits for him to wake up. When he does, she smiles and whispers the words he wants to hear - _I'm back, Draco_. She places one hand on his shoulder and when he wakes up, the memory of her touch makes him feel like weeping. But he does not.

He is not capable of crying. People said that when his mother died – _Look at him, has he once cried_? Well, maybe he has no tear ducts, or maybe he was not human.

Instead, Draco feels so sick inside. If he was having a stroke, then it was a suitable penance for all the ruin he has brought upon his tired body. If it was a broken heart, he deserves that too.

On nights like those, he would slip out the yellowed bit of parchment, the only thing Ginny had left behind and he would read the words in the parchment.

Difficult or easy, pleasant or bitter, you are the same you. I cannot live without you. I cannot live with you.

And he would continue waiting, as much as he told himself not to, as much as he kept moving on.

Then he would go back to sleep in the master bedroom of the Malfoy Manor.

In the morning while Ginerva Wood brushed her red hair, which now grazed her shoulders, Draco would drink the black coffee the house elves brought him.

As Oliver tackled her from behind, messing up her hair and kissing her on the nape of her neck, Draco would begin the chores he does routinely – paying the bills, speaking with his legal advisors, making certain rents are collected and money given.

At noon, when Ginny finds out that she is three months pregnant with Oliver's child, he will walk the boundaries of his property to make certain none of the shields are down and no one has trespassed.

He will do this as he does every single day and he will not stop until he was completely exhausted, knowing full well that if he ever did stop, if he ever looked around him, every single acre of this land he owned would remind him of all that went wrong in his life.

* * *

It was freezing in Ginny's dream on the morning when it happened, that first bright day of the year. She was dreaming about a tree of ice – leaves, trunk, and branches – when she heard a cry. In her dreams, the tree fell to pieces, shards of crystals that cut like knives. 

That was when she sat up with a jolt; glancing at her husband who lay beside her, sound asleep. Shifting his arm off her hip, she slipped on her dressing gown and hurriedly padded down the hallway towards her daughter's room.

Amelia, her star, her life, the light of their entire lives. Ginny never forgot the feeling of utmost love that flooded her when Oliver had placed their baby daughter in her hands.

She pushed the door of her daughter's room and stopped, breathless with anxiety. She was fine, as sound asleep as her father was. Ginny walked forward and knelt beside her daughter's bed, watching her chest rise and fall with each breath.

At seven, Amelia or Mia as they called her, was precocious and full of a joy and happiness nether Oliver nor Ginny had ever possessed. She was their sun child, born an hour after the break of dawn.

Dark brown hair that she had inherited from her father fanned out around her head like a halo as she slept, her tiny fingers curled around the stuffed kneazle Harry and Susan had given her for her fifth birthday.

Everyone she said she looked like the splitting image of Ginny herself. Ginny disagreed. She never had the light that shone around Mia, or that laughter which rang like fairy bells.

"Ginny?"

She turned around, at the hushed whisper of her name uttered with tender familiarity typical of wives and husbands.

She stood up and walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

"What's the matter, sweetheart?" Oliver asked, her his hair mussed and eyes bleary from sleep.

She shook her head, smiling wearily. "Just a strange dream."

He did not probe knowing that she would tell him when she wanted to.

"An owl dropped an envelope for you. That's what woke me up."

He held out a thick brown envelope and as Ginny took it, she felt its weight, its burden and something in her sank to her stomach. Her name was scrawled on it, in an unintelligible scrawl.

She followed Oliver to the kitchen. As he fixed pancakes and coffee for the both of them, she sat at the kitchen table, opened the envelope and pulled out the thick parchments in it.

She read it all, one by one, without ever pausing, her face a blank mask. Oliver sat beside her, waiting and watching.

There were times before when he feared she would leave him to go back to Malfoy. He had lived with that fear for so long it had become a part of him, of his relationship with her. It was not that he did not trust her. He just never trusted the hold and control Malfoy had over her. But Mia had changed all that. Where Ginny might have been capable of leaving him, she would never leave Mia, not for anything in the world.

Once Ginny finished reading everything, she reached across for Oliver, burying her face in his shoulder, surprisingly dry-eyed.

She went for the service. Oliver had not stopped her. He knew she needed some sort of closure so he took Mia with him to visit his parents in Scotland for the weekend so that Ginny would have the time and space to get things done.

Besides, who was he to stand in judgement of another man? Who was he to measure another man's lifetime of sorrow? He knew what could happen to man who would not give up things impossible to hold onto. He knew what could happen to a man who could not let go of his pain.

Ginny was surprised she was not the only mourner, considering how people felt about Malfoy. But several other women attend the service, each come in by herself and unless Ginny was mistaken, some are crying. The coffin was now closed, as Draco would have wished.

Ginny had seen him, before they closed the coffin. He was clad in pale gray dress robes, black boots hand polished. Draco's legal advisor, Edward, had chosen the coffin, the most expensive one available, fashioned of cherry wood and brass. He was the one who had contacted Ginny. He was waiting at the other end of the room, to speak with Ginny.

Ginny stared down at Draco and observed how withered he looked, how gaunt and thin he had become, his skin an ashy pale colour. He had drunk himself to death was what the coronary report had written - a fitting ending for a man who hurt others as much as himself.

After the service was over, Ginny stood on the step of the funeral parlour, Edward beside her. She told him what her decisions were, since Malfoy had left everything in her name. A final slap on her face, his way of holding on to her and making her feel his presence always. He always had to have the final say. That was just his way. She did not hold it against him.

Now that he was dead, Draco seemed much sweeter. Ginny remembered how scorching his kisses were and the memory alone could turn her inside out after all these years. He could burn her up alive; he could do it in a minute flat and that was not so easy to forget. But she had forgotten most of it, giving priority to memories that mattered so much more to her – Oliver's smile, his touch, Mia's hair in her face and her precious hugs.

That was why Ginny was planning on giving all of Malfoy's wealth away. She wanted nothing of his. She wanted the land donated back to the town it was in, a trust to be drawn up. The income from Malfoy properties in Wales would pay for the upkeep of the land and maintenance of the house elves. The trust would underwrite the Ministry of Magic library, the War Victims Funds, Daigon Alley Restoration funds and whatever charitable organisations they deemed worthy.

Ginny even arranged for Draco to be buried right in front of his house, on his land, in the exact spot where the roses refused to grow. Years from now, girls would point to the miraculously overgrown bush of red roses that had spilled all over the garden and whisper that if you kissed the boy you loved beneath the Malfoy Manor roses, he would be yours forever whether he wanted to be or not.

But Ginny knew better and on the first day of every year, she would always make certain to say a prayer for those to whom she wished peace, both the living and the dead.

**_THE END_**

* * *

**A/N NOTE – **

**If you like this story, I can bet my nonexistent collection of chocolate frog cards that you will love '_In The Shadows_' and '_Harder to Breathe'_ and _'Spring Fever'_ –three one shot DG fics**

**And if you're into any kind of DG fic, do check out '_That Thing You Do'_**

**All these stories can be found by simply clicking on 'Nutsaboutremus' and going to my author's profile**


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